Johns Hopkins Students and Faculty Members Confront India’s COVID-19 Crisis

It’s not just students who are helping to fight COVID-19 in India. Much of this effort is being done in concert with the new Johns Hopkins India Institute (JHII) and its COVID-19 task force, which, like the students, is addressing priorities identified by partners in India. The task force is soliciting donations and helping to obtain oxygen supplies, personal protective equipment, lab material, testing kits and humanitarian aid by mobilizing faculty members, staff members and students from across The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine. As of June 15, JHII received 550 gifts totaling more than $1.1 million to help support nearly a dozen partner organizations in India and to buy four shipments of oxygen concentrators — portable devices that supply an oxygen-rich gas stream from surrounding air through a mask or nasal tubes.

“What’s happening in India is truly horrific,” says Amita Gupta, professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Gupta co-chairs the JHII with David Peters, chair of the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If India is not safe, the world’s not safe. COVID anywhere affects us everywhere, and so we can’t lay down the guard.”