To show how the Indian diaspora of 17 million is mobilizing to help their home country — as its health system cracks under the weight of its Covid case count — Dan Levin featured a Pittsburgh woman’s efforts in The New York Times.
Savita Mullapudi, an international development consultant based in Pittsburgh, was contacted via WhatsApp by a former colleague in India, who was desperately searching for oxygen concentrators, which filter oxygen from the air.
One company that made them (which wasn’t specified) was based in Pittsburgh. Mullapudi was able to crowd-source information about the quality of the oxygen concentrators by tapping into a network of Indian doctors across Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania. They gave the manufacturer “rave reviews.”
“The minute I said ‘India Covid,’ I was inundated with responses,” Mullapudi said. “These networks of people that we all work with or know as friends just churned it around, and that’s what really gave the organization confidence to go ahead.”
By Friday, 400 oxygen concentrators were ordered, to be flown to India.
Read the full story here.
