The twins, both Class 11 students at a Delhi school, started the "Help A Doc" campaign
As the country fights coronavirus, several people have stepped up to help healthcare workers fighting the disease from the frontlines. When Delhi twins Veer Ojas and Manya Anandi learnt about a shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers, they decided to do something about it.
The brother-sister duo, both Class 11 students at a Delhi school, started the "Help A Doc" campaign to raise money for PPE kits for doctors at a Gurgaon hospital. They started small, with their own savings and pocket money. They used whatever they had saved to procure a thousand masks and 10,000 gloves. Then they reached out to their friends and family for help. Another 500 PPE kits were then procured for the civil hospital in Gurgaon.
This was not possible without research, Veer Ojas says.
"We researched and spoke to doctors to find out what was needed in our healthcare system," he says.
Veer Ojas and Manya Anandi first started small with their savings and pocket money
The teenagers have now raised close to Rs 4 lakh, which has financed 500 hazmat suits, 1,000 masks, over 8,500 Nitrile gloves, and over 500 shoe-covers for the civil hospital in Gurgaon.
"When COVID-19 came to India, we grew concerned about how our limited health care system would handle this. That's when we decided to start Help A Doc to get high-quality PPEs for our frontline workers," Manya Anandi told NDTV.
The siblings have been involved in relief work and student initiatives from the time they were nine.
Doctors and health workers have been under immense pressure in the fight to contain the spread of COVID-19; many have been infected and others have had to stay away from their families to avoid spread the virus. They have been honoured for their work with thank you gestures by many.