Donating Oxygen or: How I Learned to Stop Ranting and Get Shit Done
How to solve a problem as huge as corona pandemic? There are no easy answers, all we have are some hard solutions, and some passionate people working on them.
If you want to solve a problem such as the second wave of CoVID pandemic in India, you would ideally want to get the best minds of the country to find the solutions, the hardest workers to devote their energy in working on those solutions, and the biggest reservoirs of money to deploy on those solutions.
We, a group of professionals from Jhansi-Kanpur-Lucknow area have got together to try to help the administration in solving the key problems in a bottoms-up manner. We have devoted the last 15+ days in working on solutions which can help reduce the load on existing healthcare infrastructure in our cities, which was inadequate for such a surge, and to get ready for any future waves. We primarily focused on one major problem — to understand why there is an apparent shortage of oxygen in our areas — is it to do with production or transportation or storage or usage or anything else.
We have realised, the primary problem lies with the scarcity of storage units. The basic solution lies in building the capacity of storing more oxygen with hospitals and making it available for home isolated patients. To enable the same, we are deploying funds to buy oxygen cylinders — jumbo and small — in addition to Flowmeters, BiPAP machines and oxygen concentrators for our cities. We would work with the local administrations to put those to the best use with our on-ground volunteer network.
How do we intend to make an impact?
We are raising 35 Lakhs in partnership with an NGO. We would be using these funds to buy the following:
- Jumbo Oxygen Cylinders (68Litres and 47Litres) for donating to Hospitals
- Oxygen Flowmeters to enhance the service of existing central oxygen plants
- BiPAP machines to augment the critical care units in major Hospitals
- Smaller Oxygen Cylinders (10Litres) for sharing with home isolated patients
- Oxygen Concentrators (10L/min) for sharing with home isolated patients
- Protective kits (Masks, PPEs) for essential service workers and volunteers
These are not the only things which we want to focus on, but this is a starting point which will help us solve the biggest concern of our areas.
We are requesting all our friends to contribute in either ways:
- Donate to the cause at our Milaap fundraiser
- Volunteer for effective management of resources
- Build new solutions to problems worth solving
Please reach out to any of us if you want to know anything further. We can be found at LinkedIn: Abhinav, Astha, Gautam, Pratyush, Rishabh, Ratikesh, Siddharth or can be contacted personally on whatsapp if you already know us.
What motivates me and should also motivate you? Love for my Mother and Motherland. Quoting from an interaction in Ramayana:
मित्राणि धन धान्यानि प्रजानां सम्मतानिव |
जननी जन्म भूमिश्च स्वर्गादपि गरीयसी ||
Friends, riches and grains are highly honoured in this world.
(But) mother and motherland are superior even to heaven.
Let’s do it for our Motherland and Humanity.
