This study was supported from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) and was conducted in collaboration with the AHF Public Health Institute at the University of Miami. The Panel for a Global Public Health Convention (GPHC) is an independent coalition of global leaders working to strengthen the world’s ability to prevent, prepare, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks before they become widespread pandemics. The Panel was founded in 2020 in response to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of bridging critical gaps in the global public health architecture and policy frameworks by promulgating a new global public health treaty or convention in an effort to ensure another pandemic of such magnitude does not happen again.
José Szapocznik, Ph.D.
PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE COVID-19 CRISIS IN INDIA Written by Janette Neuwahl Tannen and Robert C. Jones Jr. Ashley A. Williams contributed to this report Published on May 13, 2021 Category: Faculty, COVID-19 Insight University students and staff and faculty members with direct links to the nation, which is struggling with a massive second wave of coronavirus infections, shed light on the situation. Hargun Kaur, a junior studying nursing who hails from Punjab, India, is anxious about picking up her phone each time it rings or chimes with a new message. Although she desperately wants to hear from her family members in India, the tragedies of the recent COVID-19 surge are often too overwhelming for her and some extended family members living in the United States. “They don’t want to hear who else is in the hospital or who has died because of COVID-19,” she said, adding that her Instagram feed from friends in India is
devastating. “It’s very hard to see.” While the news images of people struggling to breathe or family members desperately searching for oxygen canisters are difficult for anyone to watch, they are even more distressing for natives of India, said students and staff and faculty members at the University of Miami with roots in the nation. They know that their siblings, aunts, uncles, parents, or grandparents could be next. “It’s hard for everyone away from home to watch that happen and know you can’t do anything right now,” said Kaur. Every day after her shift ends in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at UHealth Tower, nurse practitioner Sheeba Farhat logs onto a series of video calls with her
family in India. She often suggests protocols they should follow to protect themselves from the virus that is ravaging the country. She does her best to calm their fears. “Most of the time, they are concerned about the shortage of medical supplies at hospitals and are worried that if they should contract the virus, there wouldn’t be enough oxygen,” she said. Farhat hopes the crisis in India will subside, but that hope faces adversity. With the world’s second largest population, India’s 1.3 billion residents are experiencing one of the globe’s most severe outbreaks of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. The country has been reporting more than 300,000 daily cases of COVID-19 in the past three weeks, with total deaths exceeding 250,000.
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