As India reels under shortage of medical oxygen, a Nagpur-based railway employee has set up a small Oxygen Bank to cater to the needs of tribal and forest areas of Vidarbha districts like Amravati and Yavatmal.
Khushroo Poacha, the Office Superintendent of Commercial Department of Central Railway (CR) is deploying oxygen concentrators to these areas from Nagpur, the nerve centre of Vidarbha region.
“We have been looking at news reports of how hospitals are facing a shortage of oxygen. In cities the situation was acute…we can imagine the situation in tribal and forest areas,” Pocha told DH over the phone from Nagpur.
“We now have a small bank of oxygen concentrators…these are the sturdy ones and can be moved at ease from one place to another. We have received them as donations…we send them to places where there is a need and we do not charge a single paisa,” he said, adding that he was in touch with people on the ground to move these concentrators.
A few of them are at disposal of Dr Ashish Satav, the founder of Mahan Trust, who is working extensively in Melghat in Amravati and Yavatmal-based farmers’ leader Kishore Tiwari, the founder of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, the Chairman of Vasantrao Naik Sheti Swavlamban Mission, a post that has the status of a Minister of State.
A 17-year-old boy and 3 engineering students were among the first to donate 1 oxygen concentrator each. Zoroastrians (Parsis) based in Abu Dhabi crowd-funded 40 top-class Turkish oxygen concentrators and sent them to Nagpur.
“I am expecting more and it would be deployed in far-flung areas,” he said, adding that there has been a demand for oxygen concentrators from Wardha, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli.
In fact, last year when a lockdown was imposed after the outbreak of Covid-19, Poacha, who is associated with Seva Kitchen, donated food to lakhs of needy persons. It caught the attention of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, who personally spoke to him over the phone and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal also tweeted about his work.