By Pooja Shrivastava
An Indian-American doctor has returned to his home and is helping people to fight the deadly Covid-19 second wave. Harmandeep Singh Boparai was working in New York as a frontline worker until a couple of months ago and is now treating corona patients in India.
Boparai is currently in his hometown Amritsar and reportedly will start work to treat covid patients at a 1000 bed hospital in Mumbai where he is said to work for the next few weeks. He has been roped in by Doctors without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization.
The 34-year-old came to India sometime in April when cases were not so high but he still was in touch with doctors here on how they can build capacity in case cases surge, apart from strengthening the infrastructure to handle any kind of crisis.
“Soon enough, we saw a catastrophic rise in the cases in India. I have been able to build a capacity for intensive care at Dukh Niwaran Hospital, besides imparting training to the nurses and doctors regarding the Covid protocol that I learned in New York during the first wave,” Dr. Boparai told HT.
Commenting on the Covid-19 crisis in India, the Indian-American said that even though we had time to prepare for the bad waves as were seen across the world earlier, the spread of the virus in India could not be contained for various reasons.
“We could have vaccinated many more people so far. But, due to issues in the system, help couldn’t reach many in time.”
Dr. Boparai added that doctors have been working so hard in order to save lives.
“We must continue to support them and give them our best wishes and solidarity, for this is not an easy job.”
Apsana Begum
