Man procuring 117 oxygen devices with German friends’ help

BENGALURU: A city-based patent consultant’s brief friendship with a German project coordinator has come in handy for Covid-hit Bengaluru gasping for oxygen.
Vinay Kumar, the consultant from Basaveshwaranagar, virtually got in touch with Franziska Weissoertel, an international project coordinator based in Munich, in December 2020 to work on an agricultural project in Madanapalle.Though the project did not work out, the duo is helping Bengaluru get 117 oxygen concentrators from Germany.
The concentrator initiative was started by Kumar amid the Covid crisis in Bengaluru. He approached friends in Germany — Franziska, Monja Mueller, an entrepreneur based in Nesselwang and Christin Hollweck, a restaurant manager from Fuerth — in the first week of May to procure the machines.
“There was shortage of oxygen supply and no hospital beds. There was enough research that showed early availability of oxygen could help a Covid patient survive. Those who couldn’t get admitted to a hospital could get oxygen concentrators for survival,” he said, adding that with his experience of working with medical devices, he knew procuring oxygen concentrators from Germany was possible.
“It was becoming difficult to get concentrators from China with a waiting time of 25-30 days, especially after the situation worsened in Delhi. Even the German devices were sold out. That is when I reached out to Franziska,” he said.
Franziska told STOI Kumar sent her a request to know whether they could procure
oxygen concentrators from Germany. Kumar and Franziska’s team worked on a war footing to make this happen in a short span of time. They set up a fundraiser on betterplace-.org on May 3 and even reached out to others for financial support. They started with a goal of collecting 10,000 euros for 10 devices, but support poured in from all quarters and they will now procure 117 concentrators for 100,000 euros. They will also get pulse oximeters, thermometers, FFP2/ N95 masks, nasal cannulas and oxygen masks.
The first consignment of the devices will leave Frankfurt on Monday, said Kumar. He added that 10 each are for the Centre for health, education and technology which will distribute them among people with rare diseases, Friends Welfare Organisation which supports underprivileged groups in the city and NGOs in Hyderabad working with HIV patients.
He said the remaining concentrators will be deployed at PHCs or distributed to homes through BBMP and Project Smile Trust. Their fundraiser is still open as they have found 20 more machines to procure (https://www.betterplace.org/en/projects/94386).
Kumar and the others received support from Bangalore Medical College alumni in the US and Bengaluru. The group, headed by Dr Vasu HV, is procuring 50 concentrators for rural Karnataka. A friend of Kumar’s facilitated free shipping of the devices by sending a request to DHL Germany through DHL India. Franziska’s NGO Technik ohne Grenzen also backed the initiative.
“Marvin Zierau, product manager, medical, at Gase Partner GmbH has put in superhuman efforts to source the devices form Germany and do the paperwork for exporting them to India,” Kumar said. He added they have got some devices from the US too and 125 will arrive from Poland soon.