"We Don't Have Enough Medicines To Treat Patients": Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw attended a virtual panel discussion organised by One Share World on global vaccine equity. Mazumdar talked about how India doesn't have enough resources to deal with the pandemic and how the second wave of COVID-19 has hit India "like a tsunami".

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw said that, unlike last year, the pandemic has affected both rural and urban parts of India and blamed the state elections and festivals for the surge in cases. "This time around both urban India and more frighteningly it is rural India that has also got infected because we did have a bunch of state elections and a number of religious festivals that have really, really added to this horrific surge"

As the cases are exponentially rising every day, the healthcare facilities in India getting overburdened. Mazumdar said that the country doesn't have enough resources of medical supplies to deal with the pandemic. She said, "So hospital beds and oxygen, we don't have enough human resources to manage the kind of numbers we're seeing today. We don't have enough medicines to treat patients with."

She also said that we do not have enough vaccines to vaccinate people quickly. Highlighting the reasons behind the present situation of the country, she said that the large population of the country can one of the many challenging factors. She urged the global community to come forward and help India in this time of crisis.

So far more than 40 countries have announced that they will provide India medical supplies such as oxygen cylinders and machinery urgently, foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said.

Mazumdar further talked about how India felt confident and complacent at the beginning of the year 2021 that vaccines were donated to other countries of the world and now there is a need to ramp up the production process.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw said, “If India is not safe, I can tell you the world is not safe."