The shortage of PPE kits is not a new issue and the medical staff have complained of this issue every now and then. There were several news reports that surfaced of how doctors had to risk their lives to treat COVID patients or visit their home without a proper safety kit. A few days ago, Vivek Krishnaswamy, a law student at NALSA University of Law in Hyderabad came across the same issue. His cousin who is an intern was assigned for COVID duty but he could not continue the duty as there were no PPE kits given to them, as a result, this put him and his aged parents under huge risk.
However, the issue did not end here. Instead of complaining about it on the social media, Vivek and his family started an initiative to provide PPE Kits to these medical interns as well as professional doctors. He explains, "My mother, aunt and uncle provided more than 25,000 rupees from their savings towards this initiative. Initially, we started it with our own money and we created an Instagram page called Suma Foundation. We uploaded a few pictures and videos of purchasing PPE kits on this page. Gradually people who visited our page, friends and followers started donating us funds."
Till date, Vivek and his team has been able to raise more than 6,90,000 rupees through their Instagram page and word of mouth. He says, "Apart from this, we requested Shraddha, who is a comedian and she has many followers on Instagram to spread a word through her comedy videos. She agreed to our words and we were able to raise more funds on the day she requested people through her video."
Explaining more about the PPE kits, Vivek says, "Each PPE kit costs us Rs 1,250 and we provide them with N95 mask, gloves as well as a shield which comes up to Rs 1,500. We have been buying it from a certified pharma in Bengaluru as a lot of other hospitals also buy these kits from him. Till date, we have supplied these kits to more than 100 doctors in Bangalore Medical College, Vanivilas, Victoria hospitals, etc. We will supplying 200 hundred more kits in the coming week."
When asked about the future plans for Suma Foundation, Vivek says, "We will be registering this foundation under the charitable trust norms. A lot of people have been questioning about the money being spent and we are also maintaining transparency when it comes to the funds collected. We have maintained a separate bank account for this reason and we have been documenting every bill from the first day, we got into this initiative. We will continue to support many such initiatives related to health and medicine through our foundation in the future."
For more information on them, you can check their Instagram page: sumafightscovid
