India

More than 1.4 billion people live in India, spread across 28 states and eight union territories. It is the largest country by population and the seventh largest by area. India is ethnolinguistically and religiously diverse and has 22 major languages written in 13 different scripts recognized in the constitution.

Since the creation of the Indian state in 1947, economic growth and healthcare improvements have driven a decline in poverty and maternal mortality and an increase in life expectancy. From 1951 to today, the general life expectancy at birth rose from 36.7 to over 70 years. Since the mid-2000s, India has also seen a more than 70 percent decline in maternal mortality. Between 1960 and 2021, India also saw a more than 70 percent decline in infant mortality rates from 162 per 1,000 live births to 26, according to the World Bank.

India has also seen a drastic expansion of healthcare infrastructure and the rapid growth of a thriving pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Despite these gains, significant healthcare challenges remain across the country. These challenges are most acute among poor and remote rural communities that lack access to appropriate healthcare diagnostic, treatment, and care services. The healthcare gains in India have not spread equally, and lower socioeconomic and remote rural communities are still carrying a high communicable and non-communicable disease burden.

This is why Direct Relief is supporting a network of charitable partner hospitals and health organizations with medicines and medical supplies, with specialty chronic medications such as insulin for children living with Type 1 diabetes and enzyme replacement therapies for children with rare diseases, as well as funding to support health infrastructure such as infectious disease diagnostic equipment, medical cold chain refrigeration, and medical oxygen generation.

India’s second-wave Covid-19 crisis peaked in the first week of May 2021. At that time, the official daily Covid-19 case infection rate was above 400,000, and the daily mortality rate was above 4,000.

On the ground, particularly within urban communities in northern India, this meant hospitals had run out of bed spaces, ICUs were full and unable to admit severely ill patients and critically needed oxygen supplies were either unavailable or in intermittent supply across many facilities.

Covid-19 medications and personal protective equipment, or PPE, to protect frontline health workers were in short supply, and families were forced to go door-to-door to hospitals, trying to find a bed for sick loved ones.

As India recovered from the Covid crisis, health challenges remained around health system strengthening, improving infectious disease diagnostic and treatment capacity and access, vaccinations, delivering health services to remote communities, targeting support for vulnerable communities, and strengthening data-driven decision-making capacity.

RESPONSE AND IMPACT

Funding for health organizations responding locally – As in all emergencies, the pre-existing gaps get more prominent as resources are redirected to the crisis. That’s why Direct Relief’s focus during the Covid response was on supporting its partner network of health facilities that care for people who are among the least fortunate and most vulnerable to the crisis.

In addition to disbursing more than $7 million in cash grants as part of its response to the crisis, Direct Relief also acted as a fiscal agent for $2.5 million in donations made by ACT Grants, ensuring that donor intent was honored for 100 percent of donations made for the Covid response. Direct Relief identified, vetted, and supported the following locally-run organizations with cash grants to enable them to respond to and recover from the Covid crisis, maintain routine healthcare services to vulnerable populations, and bolster and strengthen their capacity into the future.