Amidst record COVID-19 cases in India, this 20-year-old student helps source critical medical supplies

Student and environmental activist Siddhant Sarang never imagined he would be scouring for life-saving medications and hospital beds for people across India.

But as the country continues to see record numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths — and with critical medical supplies like oxygen in short supply — he says he has a duty to help.

"The situation is very distressed," Sarang, 20, told Day 6 host Brent Bambury from New Delhi.

"If you are not infected right now, you are the luckiest people in the world."

Sarang is just one of the many volunteers who have been bolstering the efforts of health-care professionals in India, taking phone calls and responding to SOS messages from patients and their loved ones on social media.

He says the requests are not only coming from patients, but from hospitals with sometimes hundreds of patients requiring oxygen that are facing critical shortages.

Sarang began responding after his close friend's father became critically ill, and required doses of the antiviral drug remdesivir.

"I tried to contact many pharmacies and many politicians to help me get out of this situation," Sarang said.

"Unfortunately, by the time we got the medicine, we lost his father and he called me — and that 26 seconds of call broke me apart."

The friend then begged Sarang to continue helping others, and he took up the call.

Earlier this week, Sarang says he was responding to an SOS request for a teacher in Delhi in need of a hospital bed with a ventilator. 

He was also working to gather information about the husband of a woman in Australia. The man travelled to New Delhi for his parents who had contracted COVID-19 and died, and was then admitted to hospital with COVID-19 himself.

"Now, his wife and his family in Australia has no information about him, where he is and how critical he is — or even [if] he is alive or not," Sarang said.

Desperate need for drugs, supplies

As cases continue unabated in the country's densely populated cities, COVID-19 has also started spreading to rural communities where health-care systems are ill-equipped to deal with the pandemic's second wave.

Crematoriums and burial grounds have similarly struggled to keep up. Experts believe that the official pandemic-related numbers are an undercount of the massive toll the pandemic is taking on lives in the country, according to The Associated Press.

As the crisis continues, Sarang says that people are turning to the black market for critical medications like remdesivir, but expensive and illegitimate vials of the drug are being filled with water.

He also says that some pharmacists are taking advantage of the crisis by withholding remdesivir doses.

"If a buyer goes to the shop, they say, 'We have no remdesivir.' But if you offer them a large amount of money, they give you the remdesivir," said Sarang.

France 24 reported last month that one pharmacist told a desperate customer the black market was the only source of remdesivir, and offered to source it for 30 times its usual price.

Canada is sending medical supplies — including 350 ventilators and 25,000 vials of remdesivir, or 4,000 courses to treatment — to India. 

On Thursday, under order by the country's Supreme Court, India's government agreed to provide more medical oxygen to hospitals in New Delhi. 

Medical experts, politicians and even Supreme Court judges have also called on the government to implement national restrictions in hopes of slowing the rising case numbers. 

"In my opinion, only a national stay-at-home order and declaring a medical emergency will help to address the current health-care needs," Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist with the University of Michigan, said on Twitter.

But despite the dire situation his country faces, Sarang says he has found hope.

"People from every caste, religion, political party, they are united to help each other. And this is what gives me hope, that we are united," she said. 

"We are changing, and we are changing for good reason."

Written by Jason Vermes. Produced by Pedro Sanchez.

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