WHO-supported medical supplies reach states/UTs
18 May 2021
________________________________________________________________________________
Several States and Union Territories across India have begun receiving consignments of oxygen concentrators and tents for temporary health facilities brought by WHO to support India’s COVID-19 surge response.
Chandigarh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh are among the states that received oxygen concentrators on 17 May.
WHO is supporting India to fill critical gaps in the availability of oxygen, testing kits, and hospital beds. It has provided 1.2 million respirator masks (KN95), 4000 oxygen concentrators, 128 tents for auxiliary health facilities, 1.2 million reagents and 400,000 PCR test and swab kits.
“WHO stands in solidarity with the people of India in this crisis and our sympathies are with the families who have lost their loved ones. We will continue to work with the Union government and State governments to end the pandemic,” said Dr Roderico H Ofrin, WHO Country Representative to India.
On 15 May, 170 metric tons of WHO-supported medical resources, including oxygen concentrators and tents for temporary health facilities, reached Delhi and within two days, 27 truckloads of these have been rushed to states for rapid deployment in India's COVID-19 response.
A large consignment for the North East states left the warehouse on 17 May.
WHO has a network of over 2 600 technical officers supporting the government in elimination of tuberculosis and Neglected Tropical Diseases, Routine Immunisation and Non Communicable Diseases programmes covering all States and Union Territories.
These teams were repurposed last year to support the pandemic response at the grassroot level. In the recent surge, they are redeployed again to support State governments in responding to the second wave.
WHO supports Central and State governments and districts in rapid scale-up of active case detection; epidemiological and situational monitoring and assessments; augmenting critical gap in supplies, vaccination for COVID19 and communicating evidence-based messages for preventing COVID-19.