306 - The Dire COVID-19 Crisis in India
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
India is in the throes of the world's worst COVID-19 infection with overwhelmed health systems, and a shortage of oxygen, hospital beds, testing, and medications. Dr. Amita Gupta, chair of the Johns Hopkins India Institute, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how this "unprecedented public health disaster" snuck up on the country after they successfully controlled the first wave back in the fall. They also discuss what needs to be done to address the crisis, and how you as an individual can help. Note: Please consider donating to the following organizations: https://giving.jhu.edu/ways-to-give/international-giving/johns-hopkins-india-institute/ https://www.jhpiego.org/countries-we-support/india/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.7 | at jhh.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.6 | With India experiencing an unprecedented and catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak, I catch up with |
| 0:53.7 | Dr. Amita Gupta, Professor of Medicine and International |
| 0:57.1 | Health at Johns Hopkins and Faculty Chair of the Hopkins India Institute. |
| 1:02.6 | We talk about what's happening in India and what can be done about it. Let's listen. |
| 1:08.5 | Dr. Gupta, thank you for taking the time to join me on the podcast. |
| 1:12.4 | What is the situation now in India? |
| 1:15.0 | Thank you, Josh, for that question. |
| 1:17.7 | I will say that the situation in India is truly dire. |
| 1:22.6 | It's really the worst that we've seen with COVID, anywhere in the world. We now have reached five days in a row |
| 1:33.3 | with over 350,000 cases a day, and we know that that's an underreporting. The health system is |
| 1:39.1 | completely overwhelmed, and we have acute shortages of things like oxygen, hospital beds, testing, medications, |
| 1:48.6 | and it's just an unprecedented public health disaster. Now, some of our listeners may not be |
| 1:55.6 | very familiar with the situation in India before this crisis has hit, and I know you've done a lot of work there. |
| 2:02.6 | Could you set the stage a little bit? What do people need to know to even understand how critical |
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