Breath Of Life Delivered To COVID-19 Patients Via GoFundMe Effort

RESTON, VA — While much of the recent news about COVID-19 in Virginia has been positive, other places around the world are facing staggeringly high numbers of new cases and deaths due to the disease.

India reported more than 414,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a single day on May 5, and more than 4,300 new deaths on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

About three weeks ago, Afzal Memon of Reston received a call for help from the Gujarat Sarvajanik Welfare Trust (GSWT), a non-governmental agency that runs hospitals and schools for underprivileged children in the town where he grew up.

"They had a shortage of oxygen for the COVID patients that were admitted in the hospital," Memon said. "Every day, they were running out of oxygen around 5 p.m., and they had to wait four or five hours for the next batch to arrive."

GSWT was able to acquire canisters of concentrated oxygen directly from the factory, but in order for the patients to use them, they needed more oxygen concentrators.

"These devices basically use the ambient air to put the oxygen out and supply it to the patients," Memon said. "They said these devices are available in the U.S. and they're manufactured in China as well, but the Chinese supply chain was overloaded with orders."

With the help of five other people, Memon started a GoFundMe campaign to raise enough money to purchase and ship more than 100 oxygen concentrators to India. They also partnered with the Saiyed Foundation, a non-profit that runs mobile clinics in India.

As of 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the campaign had raised more than $36,000 toward its $50,000 goal. They also received a grant from IMANA, an organization with a global healthcare mission.

Given the severity of the COVID-19 crisis in India and the urgent demand for the oxygen concentrators, Memon and the other organizers decided to begin sending shipments as quickly as they could.

A week and a half after the campaign began, the first shipment arrived in Gujarat, India. While some of the devices were delivered to homes, the rest were distributed across 15 hospitals.

"Some of these patients were taking these devices home, because there were no beds available in the hospital," Memon said. "A lot of these mild to medium complexity cases were being treated at home."

The campaign's second shipment is scheduled to leave JFK Airport in New York City on Tuesday. It includes high-capacity devices that can be installed in hospitals. Another shipment leaving from Miami will carry 15 ventilators for intensive care units.

Memon, his fellow organizers, and the Saiyed Foundation are committed to delivering more than 100 oxygen contractors, whether they reach their campaign goal or not. However, they welcome any support members of the community are willing to provide.

"We've seen these spikes were happening all across the U.S., from New York to L.A. to Seattle and so on," he said. "Everybody gets infected by this at some point. We want to make sure that whenever or wherever there is a need, everybody should pitch in. We can lessen the effects of it, lessen the suffering that is resulting from it."

Support the COVID-19 - Oxygen Concentrators for Gujarat India campaign by donating on GoFundMe or on the mirror campaign site on LaunchGood.

GoFundMe is a Patch promotional partner.