Matters India Reporter
NEW DELHI, March 27, 2020: The Christian Coalition for Health, the largest healthcare system in India in the private sector, has offered its facilities to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fight the coronavirus pandemic that has threatened the country’s entire population.
“At this time of grave threat to the health and wellbeing of the entire population of India, we the members of the Christian Coalition for Health write to express our solidarity with you and our Nation, as it faces the challenge of Covid19,” says the March 26 letter addressed to the premier.
The letter points out that the coalition has more than 1.000 hospitals with about 60,000 inpatient beds across the country that have over the years provided quality care that is accessible, affordable, rational and compassionate, healthcare to all, especially people at the margins of society.
The letter is signed by Redemptortist Father Mathew Abraham, coalition president and director general of the Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI), Doctor Priya John, coalition vice president and general secretary of the Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI) and Doctor Sunil Gokavi, coalition treasurer and executive director of Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA).
Father Abraham has expressed the coalition’s solidarity with the prime minster and the nation, as they face the challenges of Covid 19. The letter to the prime minister also state that the coalition will work “in the best way possible for the health and wellbeing of the people of this nation, to fight this pandemic.”
The letter updates the prime minister about the preparations done by the coalition’s member hospitals to face the Covid19 challenges. These institutions, the letter says, have over the past weeks organized coordinating meetings and webinars to help their disaster preparedness to check the spread of Covid19 in their areas.
The letter further states that the coalition’s member hospitals already collaborate with local government healthcare officials in their fight against the pandemic. The coalition leaders also explain that their member hospitals in remote areas now prepare handmade masks out of cloth and Personal Protective Equipment from large plastic bags for their healthcare workers.