Help Provide Medical Equipment to Rural India

The rural areas of India are some of the most harshly affected by COVID - they are also some of the most chronically underserved, suffering from profound shortfalls in life-saving medical equipment. Unfortunately, much of the fantastic relief work done by major NGOs does not penetrate beyond urban centres. According to the ICMR, nearly 70% of people were infected with COVID in rural villages in India.

Our plan is to raise money to purchase 40 vital oxygen concentrators which will be distributed to hospitals serving virus hotspots in rural areas of the state of Uttar Pradesh, which at the time of writing is the Indian state second-most-severely-afflicted by this latest and most devastating wave of COVID in India.

Oxygen concentrators assist COVID-afflicted patients to breathe normally, helping to maintain their stable condition. Concentrators are a cost-effective option for increasing availability of medical oxygen in poorer regions, able to provide oxygen therapy for as little as Rs 8 per patient per day . They are mobile and require minimal service and maintenance. You can find out more about them here .

We will source all of the oxygen concentrators locally, to maximise the speed of the relief we are able to provide and the quality of local maintenance available. As concentrators are cheaper when bought locally, this local sourcing will also allow us to purchase more equipment per donation.

We will be purchasing the concentrators independently from local vendors, and working directly with Rajesh Kumar , the District Magistrate of Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, to coordinate their allocation to hospitals in the region. If we are able to exceed our funding target, we plan to begin expanding our efforts more broadly throughout Uttar Pradesh.

India’s government is doing what it can to reach afflicted populations in rural areas – but this will take time, and neither domestic nor international relief efforts have reached these regions yet. For that reason, grassroots campaigns like ours are vital. Every second and every penny of every donation counts.

COVID has touched us all – members of our fundraising team have had endure the sickness and death of loved ones from the virus – and each and every relief effort, however small, is part of a much larger global effort to defeat this virus.

Please give generously!

Who We Are

This fundraiser was created by Supriya Rai. Supriya is a tech entrepreneur from Uttar Pradesh, now living in London. She is a member of the Women's India Chamber of Commerce and Industry (WICCI). Her family reside in Uttar Pradesh still, and she retains very strong ties to the region.

The funding team includes Max Gorynski, himself a tech entrepreneur and writer from London.

Please give generously!