Posted by Ann Sorvari on Jul 30, 2020
The Rotary Club of Acton-Boxborough is the international partner in a $94,000 COVID-19 intensive-care-unit project at Surya Sahyadri Hospital in Pune, India. This project, set in motion by the six Rotary clubs of Pune, India, was created to fund the fight against this terrible new disease.
 
The Pune project has funded personal-protective-equipment materials, testing kits, educational materials, and medicines, as well as ICU equipment of ventilators, defibrillators and ECG machines, and other post-COVID-19 hospital improvements. From conception to launch, the entire funding-application process for the Pune project took less than two months.
 
“That was thanks to the willingness of all parties to give speed and priority to the normally lengthy approval process,” says Sudin Apte, president of the Rotary Club of Pune Pristine, one of the project partners, when the project was funded.
 
According to a recent story in the Hindustan Times, less than 1.94 percent of the more than 342,000 active COVID-19 cases in India are in ICU, 0.35 percent are on ventilator support, and 2.81 percent are being given oxygen, while the recovery rate has improved to more than 63 percent with more than 635,0000 patients have recuperated from the disease. India, the second-most populous country in the world with 1.35 billion people, has 727 cases of COVID-19 per million population, which is four to eight times lower than some European nations.
 
The cooperating organization for COVID-19 ICU project is Surya Sahyadri Hospital (shown right). In addition to the Acton-Boxborough and Pune Pristine clubs, the five other project partners are the Rotary clubs of Kharghar MidtownPanvel MidtownPune Far EastPune Laxmi Road, and Pune Metro, all serving the Pune area. The We Serve Foundation, based in Lexington, Kentucky, also donated some of the costs associated with participating in project fund from The Rotary Foundation, making the Acton-Boxborough club’s participation possible.
 
The Acton-Boxborough club had previously partnered with the Pune Pristine club on a 2018-2019 project for 50 pediatric-heart surgeries. When the effort arose to fund a new project to combat COVID-19, Sanjay Deshpande (shown left), a native of India who was then a member of the Rotary Club of Wachusett Area in Massachusetts and is now a member of the Rotary Club of Lake Nona Lunch in Florida, approached the Acton-Boxborough club again about becoming an International partner, adding the power of Rotary to the efforts of clubs and individuals.
 
“Once again, as so often before in the history of Rotary,” says Ann Sorvari (shown right), during the recent online meeting about the Pune project), the Acton-Boxborough club’s international contact on the latest Pune project, “the generosity and compassion of individuals, clubs, and organizations came together to make a difference.”
 
For more information, contact Acton-Boxborough Rotarian Ann Sorvari, who led this project for her club, at 978-857-9238 or ann@sorvari.net.