Honorable Deputy Chief Minister Shri Dr. Ashwath Narayan launched the Breathe India Initiative run by Covid India Campaign. He dedicated a number of oxygen concentrators, defibrillators and BiPAP machines, patient monitors and other medical equipment and supplies to the society in the presence of ADGP Reserve Police Mr. Alok Kumar (IPS).
Speaking on the occasion the Dy. CM Dr. Ashwath Narayan thanked the organizers for coming together in such a short time and supporting 6 centers already. He said “We thank Covid India Campaign for supporting the state government of Karnataka in this time of need by launching the Breathe India initiative and the 7 Community Oxygen Centres across the state of Karnataka. This initiative has been instrumental in easing the need of oxygen in the hospitals and augmenting the entire healthcare system in the state”
Dr. Shalini Nalwad, Chairperson of the ICATT Foundation and Co-founder of the Covid India Campaign said” We have been very active since the first wave, enabling more than INR 4 Crores worth of N95 masks, PPE kits and other essential medical supplies to the frontline workers and we are now focussing on converting normal beds into oxygenated beds by deploying the necessary medical infrastructure in place”
Dr. Naga Nischal, Consultant Emergency Medicine, Head of Clinical Services at Cloudnine Hospitals and Karnataka President for the Society for Emergency Medicine of India said, “When patients are administered oxygen early, deterioration of their condition can be avoided. Our aim was to shorten the time to availability of oxygen for needy patients by launching Community Oxygen Centers pan India that will administer oxygen and needful medications without a delay”
Swadeep Pillarisetti, an IIT Madras alumnus, Co-founder of Covid India Campaign (CIC) and Lead, Breathe India Initiative said, “Speed is of the essence, hence we quickly conceptualized this and brought together this amazing team of volunteers and organizations in a record time. We aim to set up one Community Oxygen Centre every 24 hours across the country. We have also garnered strong CSR support from various large corporates and NGOs in India as well as abroad”
Arjun Nagarajan, Co- Founder and CEO at Syook and Co-lead of the Breathe India Initiative said, “A lot of things from fundraise to supply chain to distribution had to be organized in a very short time. We have raised over INR 1 Crore in about a week and in parallel got things going on the ground. We have supplies coming in from different areas around the world like the US, Israel and China. I would like to thank all our donors, supporters and volunteers”.
Harsha Krishna, The President of Aviratha Bharatha said “We are working very closely with the local administration to get them timely help as soon as possible. I would like to thank all the volunteers on the ground who are working very closely with healthcare personnel to provide equipment in need”.
About Covid India Campaign: CIC is a pan India disaster support task force, run by the ICATT foundation, comprises leading critical care specialists, frontline doctors, NGOs, entrepreneurs, CXOs and social workers. CIC has set up a community oxygen center in a record time of 7 days. This organization has been working on helping society since the first wave and quickly launched the Breathe India Initiative to increase the supply of oxygenated beds.
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