We have all seen the awful scenes of the overwhelming situation in India with COVID-19 and heard of the shortage of beds, PPE supplies, medicines and Oxygen. While the governments of the world are beginning to send these vital supplies, none of these can be used to treat patients without doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers. These workers are putting their lives, and those of their families, on the line every day while they desperately try to treat the tsunami of COVID-19 patients. As the queues get longer outside the hospitals, the stress and strain they must be under is unimaginable. However, they are just normal everyday people who are doing an impossible job without the equipment or support they need. They are physically and emotionally exhausted and need our help RIGHT NOW!

I have direct contact with Dr Charuta Mandke at a public hospital in Mumbai. Through her collaboration with the not-for-profit Seva Sahayog Foundation (www.sevasahayog.org) she has been working to provide vital support to local healthcare workers by supplying them with protective equipment, scrubs, healthy food and nutritional supplements, as well as providing for their stay if they themselves have to go into quarantine. She also organises vital mental health programmes and well-being workshops to help them navigate their way through this crisis. Additionally, she works to provide public hospitals with equipment such as Non-invasive ventilators and PPE kits. But all this requires funds.

As a UK Doctor, I have worked in an NHS hospital throughout this COVID-19 pandemic. My colleagues and I were very privileged to receive amazing support from our local communities- be that through groups sewing PPE hoods and scrubs for us, shops/restaurants providing us with free food and snacks while we were on 12 hour shifts, or being offered well-being/mental health support/counselling. This support was absolutely vital, and hugely appreciated, as we navigated our way through the COVID-19 pandemic together. Now I feel it is our time to pay that support forward to our healthcare colleagues in India who are so desperately in need of it. I need YOUR help to be able to do that.

Please give what you can. Every little bit will directly help healthcare workers in India cope with, what must be, the most horrifying and daunting battle of their working lives.

Thank you for your support.