India, in the middle of the second wave of COVID-19, needs to rapidly augment oxygen supply to hospitals. In order to save as many lives as possible, ACT Grants (a not-for-profit movement created by the VC and start-up community in India), Swasth Alliance (a not-for-profit alliance of over 150+ healthcare organisations) and Feeding India (a not-for-profit run by Zomato) are working towards the goal of sourcing and distributing 50,000 oxygen concentrators. These oxygen concentrators will be donated across India free of cost, largely to various public health institutions and NGOs working for public health. Delhivery (logistics partner), Amazon (Logistics partner), Temasek Foundation (Sourcing and Funding partner), Paytm (Sourcing partner) and several others from the ecosystem are supporting this effort. MyGov is supporting the initiative by ensuring proper coordination with various stakeholders involved, in particular the District Collectors for most optimal utilization of the oxygen concentrators.

These oxygen concentrators will be donated within the month of May. Over 2500 concentrators have already been delivered, another 7500 will be shipped in the next 7 days, and the remaining will get delivered over the next 3 weeks in batches.  

A joint committee has been formed in the spirit of public-private partnership to oversee the distribution process and ensure equitable & transparent allocation. Committee members include –

• Sanjeev Bikhchandani – Founder, Info Edge & Chairman of the Committee
• Abhishek Singh – CEO, MyGov India, Government of India
• Dr. Rajiv Garg – Former DGHS, Government of India and currently Professor of Excellence in the Directorate General of Health Services, GoI
• Prof. V. Kamakoti – Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras and Member, National Security Advisory Board
• Prof. Dr. Arvind Kumar of Lung Care Foundation, Ex AIIMS
• Abhiraj Singh Bhal – Founder & CEO, Urban Company & Representative of ACT
• Mohit Bhatnagar – MD, Sequoia India - Representative of ACT
• Deepinder Goyal – Founder & CEO, Zomato & Representative of Feeding India

Given that demand for oxygen concentrators currently outstrips supply, an allocation methodology has been developed leveraging publicly available COVID-19 data. This methodology is further refined using predictive analytics generated by the Aarogya Setu ITIHAS interface (Developed by IIT Madras) for emerging hotspots.

The methodology is published on MyGov (mygov.in), Swasth (swasth.app) and ACT websites. The district-level distribution of oxygen concentrators will also be made available on: https://self4society.mygov.in/  and https://www.swasth.app/oc-deployment

Demand for oxygen concentrators from the frontline is being collected through a form hosted by the Swasth Alliance for all (https://www.swasth.app/covid19) and on MyGov.in for District Collectors (https://self4society.mygov.in/collector). Various district magistrates, state governments and not-for-profit healthcare providers are required to fill in their requirements of oxygen concentrators in this form.

The committee is focused on rapid deployment of these oxygen concentrators in order to save the most number of lives, as soon as possible.

About ACT Grants

ACT Grants, a coalition of Indian startup founders and VC firms first came together in March 2020 to battle the pandemic. United in the belief that we can harness entrepreneurial energy to solve societal problems, ACT Grants raised an initial $13 million (Rs 100 crore) fund last year to provide grants to tech-driven companies creating solutions that could have an immediate impact, at scale. To date, ACT Grants has funded 55 innovative startups fighting COVID-19 across 27 states, touching the lives of over 49 million people.

In light of the second Covid wave, ACT is focused on tackling immediate shortage of oxygen supply on a war footing. Their goal is to support deployment of oxygen solutions, including concentrators and oxygen plants to hospitals across India and also look at bolstering medical manpower, homecare and help scale India’s vaccination efforts.

To know more, visit www.actgrants.in  

About Swasth Alliance

Swasth is an alliance of over 150+ healthcare organisations in the country, including hospitals, rural health NGOs, insurers, health tech, med-tech, and others. The vision of the alliance is to help leverage digital health technologies to drive healthcare inclusion and outcomes, with a particular focus on enabling comprehensive, integrated care models. To this end, over the last 6 months, Swasth developed key public digital infrastructure for the health system as well as deployed oxygen concentrators at public and non-profit health centres in some of India's remotest districts. These concentrators have been life-saving in the current wave of the pandemic.

During this second wave, Swasth is massively scaling it’s oxygen concentrator program, distributing oximeters to community health workers, running a crowd-sourced, verified search engine for medical resources and crisis line (https://liferesources.in/ ), a WhatsApp self-care chatbot (https://cutt.ly/ChatwithSwasthSakhi ) to deliver local language content on self-management.

To know more , visit : https://www.swasth.app/

About Feeding India:

Feeding India, is a not-for-profit organization by Zomato, which aims to reduce the problem of hunger within underserved communities in India. It has a presence across 185+ cities in India and so far, it has served over 120 million meals to those without food security. Feeding India became a part of Zomato in January 2019, and are working together to eradicate hunger and shape the future of food. It continues to be an independently run, non-commercial, volunteer led, not-for-profit organization.

To know more, visit www.feedingindia.org

About MyGov

MyGov is Government of India’s citizen engagement and crowdsourcing platform, launched in 2014, with an objective to promote active citizen participation in governance and policymaking.  Through its innovative portal, App and presence on all social media platforms, MyGov enables participative governance by disseminating authentic information and crowdsourcing ideas and suggestions from citizens. Its dedicated COVID19 portal https://www.mygov.in/covid-19  has become the single source of truth for all COVID related information. Its Self4Society portal – https://self4society.mygov.in/ enables corporations and citizens to volunteer and donate for social causes.

To know more, visit www.mygov.in

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RKJ/M

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