$150,000 commitment for oxygen and urgent medical assistance for India

There have been more COVID cases in India over the last week than anywhere else in the world. Yesterday marked another record global high for daily caseload—the fifth day in a row—amassing 352,991 new cases and 2,812 deaths. 

The skyrocketing cases have collapsed the country’s healthcare system. Thousands of people are in desperate need of oxygen—and the needs are exponentially greater than the supply.  

Critically ill patients have died in parking lots, waiting desperately for care that would never arrive, for oxygen that wasn’t there. Some hospitals have inched within minutes of their oxygen supplies running out. Others have run out entirely. Families have gone to the greatest lengths to get their loved ones care, including a desperate but determined granddaughter in Delhi who contacted over two hundred places to find a hospital bed with oxygen available for her 94-year-old, gravely ill grandfather. (BBC) Families have watched helplessly as their loved ones struggle to breathe—knowing there’s no oxygen to fill their lungs, no supply to comfort their gasps.

Crematoriums have no room left, so families have had to cremate loved ones in mass funeral pyres. As the death toll has continued to rise, so many bodies are needing to be cremated that families are asking to cut down trees in city parks, needing the wood for kindling to set pyres ablaze. (AP)

The collective loss is unimaginable, incalculable, relentless. Completely, overwhelmingly relentless.

India needs oxygen. With manufacturing shut down, there’s no way to produce more in-country.  The country is now relying on other countries, nonprofits, and aid organizations to transport the desperately needed resource in. 

In response, Together Rising has committed $150,000 to deploy oxygen and related medical assistance to India through our partners on the ground.

We will be sharing more information with you soon—but want you to know now that you are showing up for these families through Together Rising.

To date, we have dedicated $1,286,587.84 to urgent COVID relief. Together Rising will be giving 100% of the donations we receive through Friday to ongoing COVID relief, in India and around the globe.

[Sources: BBC: India COVID: The messages deciding between life and death; AP Photos: Mass funeral pyres reflect India’s COVID crisis]