After Friend’s Death, Physician Rallies Support for India’s COVID Crisis

Ash Tewari, MD, got an urgent call from the children of one of his good childhood friends from his hometown of Kanpur, India. It was 3 a.m. there, so he knew the news wouldn’t be good.

Their father was in a bad way: he could barely move, and his oxygen saturation was dipping into the 60s.

Tewari told them to try to get their father to a hospital. He stayed with them on video chat as they drove to the first hospital. After a 20-minute wait, the hospital turned them away because it had no more beds.

After another long drive, the second hospital said it was out of ventilators, but it could offer IV fluids. Seeing his friend’s condition, and knowing this would likely be the story at any other hospital they tried, Tewari recommended they take the offer.

Tewari’s friend died not long after admission.

After that, Tewari knew he could no longer stand by and watch India struggle through its COVID-19 surge. He had to help.

The chair of urology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City put out an urgent message to colleagues and leadership, asking if they had any supplies to spare.

That was just over 2 weeks ago. He has since gathered 25 ventilators and 100 sleep apnea machines with kits to convert them to ventilators. Last Friday, staff and volunteers sorted them into packages that will ultimately go to public hospitals in different Indian cities, including in his hometown of Kanpur.

“When you face something sad, you can either be sad or you can do something positive,” Tewari told MedPage Today. “While you can’t help those who have already suffered, you can feel like you’re contributing to the solution.”

Tewari knows that suffering all to well. Besides losing a friend, he had been in intensive care for COVID-19 during New York’s peak crisis last spring. In late April 2020, he developed a persistent fever of 103ºF and couldn’t stop vomiting. He was admitted to the hospital and spent 2 weeks in intensive care, though he didn’t have to be intubated.

His wife and daughter also caught the virus from him, but were able to weather their illness at home.

When he was released from the hospital on May 8, he could barely walk, and suffered many symptoms consistent with long COVID.

“I decided that’s not how it’s going to be,” Tewari told MedPage Today. He pushed himself to walk for longer stretches each day and did deep breathing exercises. Within 10 days of discharge, he was able to start seeing patients via telehealth.

His goal was to hike a well-known Hudson Valley peak, Breakneck Ridge, by July 4. He did it in late June, but the usual 45-minute hike took an hour and a half to complete.

“There was something, but I worked at it,” he said of his long COVID. He’s now back to practicing in person and has operated on more than 400 patients since his return.

As he worked to gather supplies, he also put out a call to a friend in India who runs a logistics management company. That friend pledged to transport the entire shipment and distribute it once it arrives in Mumbai to hospitals in cities across the country.

So much of Tewari’s drive to help comes from his experience in New York last year, he said, noting that his own nurses in intensive care came from across the country to help the city during its COVID surge.

“I had nurses from Texas, Michigan, California,” he said. “They didn’t have to be in New York, but they were here.”

Many of the supplies he acquired came from New York’s surge, and now they can be put to use to help others, he said.

“It’s a very small token,” he acknowledged. “Tens of thousands of these could be used, but we only have a couple hundred. It’s a start.”

The point, he said, is to “create hope. It’s like last year when 7 p.m. used to come, everyone would come to their windows and clap. I would go out and look at it, and it felt good. I want people in India to feel they aren’t fighting alone.”

Tewari said he is not in need of monetary donations, but if hospitals have equipment they want to donate to India, he can help transport it there.

Last Updated May 05, 2021