The UN health agency was among other things sending “thousands of oxygen concentrators, prefabricated mobile field hospitals, and laboratory supplies”, he said.
On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief voiced alarm at India’s record-breaking wave of Covid-19 cases and deaths, informing that the organisation was rushing to help address the crisis.
“The situation in India is beyond heartbreaking,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
India has been facing a catastrophic coronavirus wave that has overwhelmed hospitals, with crematoriums working at full capacity.
“WHO is doing everything we can, providing critical equipment and supplies,” Tedros said.
The UN health agency was among other things sending “thousands of oxygen concentrators, prefabricated mobile field hospitals, and laboratory supplies”, he said.
It had transferred more than 2,600 of its experts from various programmes, including polio and tuberculosis, to work with Indian health authorities to help respond to the pandemic, the WHO said.
On Monday, Tedros lamented that global new case numbers have been rising for the past nine weeks straight. “To put it in perspective,” he said, “there were almost as many cases globally last week as in the first five months of the pandemic.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, told reporters: “The exponential growth that we’ve seen in case numbers is really, truly astonishing.”
She warned that India was not unique, pointing out that a number of countries had seen “similar trajectories of increases in transmission”.
“This can happen in a number of countries … if we let our guard down,” she said.
“We’re in a fragile situation.”
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
