Amrita Hospitals set up COVID Resource Centre in Faridabad

New Delhi: As part of their latest initiative to offer services to Covid affected patients and their relatives, Kerala based Mata Amritanandamayi Devi’s (Amma) Amrita Institute for Medical Sciences (Amrita Hospitals) and the organization’s youth wing, AYUDH Delhi has set up a Resource Centre in Faridabad, which is helping connect patients with medical treatment and supply options across the country.

Being conducted under the aegis of Swami Nijamritananda Puri, Head, Mata Amritanandamayi Ashram, Delhi, the centre helps locate hospital beds, oxygen, cylinders, and medications for COVID patients. The second branch of Amrita Hospitals, with over 2,000 beds, is already under construction in Faridabad.

Commenting on the current situation and the need to keep hope alive, Swami Nijamritananda Puri said, “At the core of all these initiatives is Amma’s thinking that though the world seems to be enveloped by darkness and the COVID situation casting a pall of gloom, calamities still have a way of bringing out the best in humanity. But calamities such as what the world is facing now, seem to wipe out all boundaries, and people as a whole come to help in whatever way they can. The world, for some time at least, becomes Vasudhaiva Kutumbukum – One World One Family. Though it does also underline a sad fact that it takes a calamity to awaken humanity within humanity, spirituality ever has been about becoming a human being, in the true sense of the word.”

At the Resource Centre, volunteers are working round the clock, gathering and verifying needs of the people and available resources. Two ambulances are available free of charge. Apart from oxygen supplies, they also have equipment for electrocardiograms (ECGs), blood pressure (BP), pulse, and oximeters (which measure oxygen saturation levels in the blood). Besides, the organization is also providing food and provisions for about 1000 impoverished families in and around Faridabad.

The centre was inaugurated by Rajesh Nagar, Member of the Legislative Assembly from the area, in the presence of representatives from some of the villages. Amma has asked her followers to reach out to villages adjoining Faridabad to provide them with help as well.

Talking about their other initiatives, Swami Nijamritananda Puri added, “The Mata Amritanandamayi Ashram, in the neighborhood of Vasant Kunj in New Delhi, which has always been a centre of hope for many poor families living in the area, is also avidly providing medical aid and advice to COVID impacted families. It is similarly helping low-income families in a nearby housing colony which has about 300 COVID patients at present and has seen 24 deaths in the last month alone.”

Apart from these efforts, Amma’s organization has also created a network with many hospitals that is helping people get admitted, as on their own, patients are finding it next to impossible to find beds. Since there is a major shortage of oxygen production machines in the Delhi/NCR region, the organization has sourced these and even oxygen concentrators and generators from countries like Australia, Israel, Hongkong, Malaysia & Germany to name a few. A doctors’ helpline is also being put in place to counter misinformation about COVID on social media platforms.

Mata Amritanandamayi Math, which manages the 1100-bed Super Speciality Hospital – Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi, launched it in 1998 along with several free healthcare clinics, medicine dispensaries and hospitals in India. The math has provided free medical care and surgeries to more than four million people since 1998 which includes super-specialty surgeries including heart surgeries, brain surgeries and kidney transplants. Aside from free treatment, Amrita Institute provides care on a sliding scale, allowing people to pay what they can afford. This is often a minimal percent of the total medical cost.