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REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

United Nations Children's Fund

How to Help India Amid the Covid-19 Crisis: Victims, Frontline Workers and Donations

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India’s coronavirus crisis is the worst since the pandemic began, and it will probably worsen before it gets better.

Hospitals are full, oxygen supplies are dwindling, and sick people are dying as they wait to see doctors. As workers leave locked-down cities for their home villages, experts fear that the exodus could accelerate the spread of the virus in rural areas, as a similar one did last year.

Official estimates of the nationwide infection toll — well above 300,000 a day — are probably undercounted, epidemiologists say. The reported figure will mostly likely rise to 500,000 cases a day by August, they say, leaving as many as one million of India’s 1.4 billion people dead from Covid-19.

Charities, volunteers and businesses in India and beyond are trying to help the country’s Covid victims and frontline workers.

Guidestar and Charity Navigator grade nonprofits on their effectiveness and financial health.)

Here are a few ways to help.

  • United Nations agencies, including UNICEF and the World Health Organization, are delivering personal protective equipment kits, oxygen concentrators, diagnostic testing systems and other supplies to India’s frontline health care workers.

  • PATH, a global health nonprofit based in Seattle, says it has a team of more than 200 people working in India to procure oxygen supplies and accelerate Covid-19 testing and surveillance.

  • The International Medical Corps, which works in conflict areas around the world, is raising money for a campaign to help provide medical equipment, P.P.E., isolation facilities and other essential supplies in India.

  • Care India says it has supplied hospitals and frontline workers in India with more than 39,000 P.P.E. kits, along with masks and other supplies. The nonprofit, which has worked in India for 70 years, accepts donations in any amount.

  • The Association for India’s Development, a Maryland-based charity that partners with nonprofits in India, says it has volunteers distributing food and protective equipment in most of India’s 29 states.

  • Project HOPE, also in Maryland, is a nonprofit providing medical training, health education and humanitarian assistance around the world. The group says it has given Covid-related assistance in 150 countries during the pandemic, including India.

  • GIVE.asia, a fund-raising platform in Singapore for causes across the Asia Pacific region, says it is working with the Singapore Red Cross to send ventilators, oxygen concentrators and oxygen generators to India. The platform also hosts fund-raising campaigns by individuals.

  • AmeriCares, a nongovernmental organization based in Connecticut that specializes in emergency medical response work, says it is working in several Indian states to deliver P.P.E., ventilators and other medical equipment, as well as to educate people on how to prevent the spread of the virus.

  • The Indian Red Cross Society has staff and volunteers running blood drives, delivering aid and medical supplies, along with providing other essential services across the country.

  • Youth Feed India and Helping Hands Charitable Trust are delivering ration kits to vulnerable residents of Mumbai. Each kit includes staples like rice and dal, and feeds a family of four for 15 days. Donate here in a variety of ways, including through Google Pay.

  • Ketto, a fund-raising platform in Mumbai, a hot spot of the country’s latest Covid outbreak, is shepherding a campaign by hundreds of entrepreneurs to purchase 3,000 oxygen concentrators. (The organizers are tweeting live updates.)

  • FromU2Them, a Mumbai nonprofit, is raising money on Ketto from individuals and Indian businesses to pay for food and medical supplies in the sprawling financial hub.

Shashank Bengali contributed reporting.

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India’s Covid Crisis: How to Help Victims and Frontline Workers

by

India’s coronavirus crisis is the worst since the pandemic began, and it will probably worsen before it gets better.

Hospitals are full, oxygen supplies are dwindling, and sick people are dying as they wait to see doctors. As workers leave locked-down cities for their home villages, experts fear that the exodus could accelerate the spread of the virus in rural areas, as a similar one did last year.

Official estimates of the nationwide infection toll — well above 300,000 a day — are probably undercounted, epidemiologists say. The reported figure will mostly likely rise to 500,000 cases a day by August, they say, leaving as many as one million of India’s 1.4 billion people dead from Covid-19.

Charities, volunteers and businesses in India and beyond are trying to help the country’s Covid victims and frontline workers.

Guidestar and Charity Navigator grade nonprofits on their effectiveness and financial health.)

Here are a few ways to help.

  • United Nations agencies, including UNICEF and the World Health Organization, are delivering personal protective equipment kits, oxygen concentrators, diagnostic testing systems and other supplies to India’s frontline health care workers.

  • The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, which represents more than 80,000 doctors in the United States, is sending oxygen machines to India. Each one costs $500. Go here to donate in intervals of $500 or here to donate less than $500.

  • The Canadian Red Cross is providing financial support for its counterpart organization in India to respond to the latest Covid wave and to prepare for future “pandemic and/or emergency events.”

  • Care India says it has supplied hospitals and frontline workers in India with more than 39,000 P.P.E. kits, along with masks and other supplies. The nonprofit, which has worked in India for 70 years, accepts donations in any amount. A donation of $134 pays for four P.P.E. kits; $671 buys 20 kits.

  • The Association for India’s Development, a Maryland-based charity that partners with nonprofits in India, says it has volunteers distributing food and protective equipment in most of India’s 29 states.

  • GIVE.asia, a fund-raising platform in Singapore for causes across the Asia Pacific region, is hosting a campaign to help finance about $75,000 worth of oxygen tanks for Covid patients in India.

  • Ketto, a fund-raising platform in Mumbai, a hot spot of the country’s latest Covid outbreak, is shepherding a campaign by hundreds of entrepreneurs to purchase 3,000 oxygen concentrators. (The organizers are tweeting live updates.)

  • FromU2Them, a Mumbai nonprofit, is raising money on Ketto from individuals and Indian businesses to pay for food and medical supplies in the sprawling financial hub.

  • Youth Feed India and Helping Hands Charitable Trust are delivering ration kits to vulnerable residents of Mumbai. They say each kit costs about 7 cents, includes staples like rice and dal, and feeds a family of four for 15 days. Donate here in a variety of ways, including through Google Pay.

Shashank Bengali contributed reporting.

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U.N. Reports Surge of Migrant Children Entering Mexico, Destined for U.S.

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MEXICO CITY — The number of migrant children arriving in Mexico and hoping to enter the United States has increased ninefold from January to March this year, the U.N. Children’s Fund said Monday, with an average of 275 minors entering the country every day.

The number of migrant children reported in Mexico rose to 3,500 at the end of March from 380 at the start of the year, according to the Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. The number includes data from Mexico’s National Migration Institute and other official sources, and provides a detailed look into the crisis.

“I was heartbroken to see the suffering of so many young children, including babies, at the Mexican border with the U.S.,” said Jean Gough, UNICEF’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, after wrapping up a five-day visit to Mexico, where he toured the northern border with the United States.

The flow of minors is part of a larger migrant crisis that has left American officials struggling to control the border, with the Biden administration expecting more apprehensions at the frontier this year than at any point in the last two decades.

two powerful back-to-back hurricanes that devastated parts of Honduras and Guatemala last fall.

The estimated 275 migrant children arriving to Mexico each day include both those coming from Central America and those who are being expelled from the United States into Mexico, according to UNICEF.

The U.N. agency found that children represented at least 30 percent of the migrant population in many Mexican shelters. Half of all children at the shelters traveled without their parents, one of the highest proportions ever recorded in Mexico, according to UNICEF.

“Most of the shelter facilities I visited in Mexico are already overcrowded and cannot accommodate the increasing number of children and families migrating northward,” Mr. Gough said.

has warned migrants not to make the journey because the border is closed, the message has not reached the average citizen in Central America. Human smugglers across Central America are preying on those desperate enough to make the trek, offering their services and saying that the migrants will be welcomed into the United States.

federal order known as Title 42, introduced by Donald J. Trump’s administration but kept in place by Mr. Biden. The order justifies rapid expulsions as a health measure amid the pandemic, allowing the United States to skirt its obligations to asylum seekers.

The trek from Central America through Mexico is arduous. Families and unaccompanied minors often travel hundreds of miles on foot only to reach Mexico and be robbed, kidnapped for ransom or sexually abused by human smugglers and criminal networks that stalk migrant corridors.

In its statement, UNICEF called for the international community to increase its support to Mexico, to help it expand its shelter network and assistance to migrants.

The U.N. agency also called for member organizations to increase aid to Central America, to improve the living conditions for citizens there so they feel they do not have to migrate. That strategy is also being pursued by Mr. Biden’s administration, which plans to spend $4 billion over the next four years on development programs in the region.

“Central American families aren’t migrating — they are fleeing,” said Mr. Gough.

“The best way to give migrant families a good reason to stay in their communities is to invest in their children’s future at the local level,” he added. “The real child crisis is not at the U.S. border, it’s in the poorest communities of northern Central America and Mexico.”

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