Ventilator donation to support COVID-19 response in India
Published: 20 May 2021
Northern Australia’s largest Australian-Indian organisation has thanked Townsville University Hospital for a donation of 13 ventilators to support the COVID-19 response in India.
The life-saving equipment will be delivered to Indian hospitals buckling under the weight of surging presentations and daily death tolls in the thousands.
Clinical director of medical oncology and president of Indiafest Townsville Dr Abhi Joshi said his group was made up of more than 1,000 Townsville-based Australian-Indians who were horrified by what they were seeing in India.
“For our community it has been mentally very challenging tuning into the news every day,” he said.
“Colleagues at our hospital have lost close relatives and almost all of our community have friends and family back in India.
“My wife’s family is back in India and they work on the frontline, so it has just been extremely stressful worrying about their safety.”
The ventilators will follow 20 oxygen machines and 240 pulse oximeters, which have already been delivered to New Delhi by Indiafest Townsville and be distributed to smaller hospitals as part of an international aid effort.
Dr Joshi said of the 25 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in India about 10 per cent would require equipment to support their breathing.
“The equivalent of a third of the population of Queensland have been in hospital in India requiring assistance to breathe,” he said.
“While this equipment is only a drop in the open my discussions with health workers in India is that this donation will be invaluable on the frontline of this health crisis.
“Our members and I are just so grateful Townsville University Hospital has come forward to support the COVID-19 response in India.”
Townsville Hospital and Health Service chief operating officer Stephen Eaton said it was important to contribute to the response in some small way.
“I’ve done work at a small hospital in Laos and I’ve seen the impact that donated equipment can have on the ability for those hospitals to care for their community,” he said.
“What we are seeing over in India is heart wrenching and truly hammers home just how fortunate we’ve been in Australia.
“To put things in perspective India had four times the number of deaths from COVID in a single day than Australia has had for the duration of the pandemic so far.”
Dr Joshi also said he hoped that Australians made the most of the relatively small increases in cases to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“I think for a lot of people in our community we haven’t seen the true devastation that this disease can cause,” he said.
“Having heard the stories of the waves of people coming into hospitals unable to breathe it just highlights to me the importance of vaccination.”
The ventilators are older models and will be replaced with new equipment at Townsville University Hospital.
Site footer
The Townsville Hospital and Health Service acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which our health facilities have been built and on which we meet today.
We pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging; and we value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and knowledge.