Covid crisis: Bangladesh sends second consignment of aid to India

Bangladesh sent the second consignment of assistance to India earlier this week to help with the second wave of Covid pandemic. The consignment included two trucks containing 2,672 boxes of medicines and protective equipment.

The assistance was handed over by Bangladesh's Deputy High Commissioner Toufique Hasan in Kolkata to the Indian Red Cross Society. The consignment contains 18 kinds of Covid-related supplies which include antibiotics, paracetamols, different kind of injections/vials, hand sanitisers, etc.

In the first week of May, Bangladesh sent India 10,000 vials of remdesivir. They were handed over at the Indian border port of Petrapole by Deputy High Commissioner Hasan. The 10,000 injections were manufactured by Bangladesh's biggest pharma company BEXIMCO Pharmaceuticals and were sent after "instruction of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh", the Bangladeshi foreign ministry in a release had said. 

The entire consignment of remdesivir has been direct to India's  northeastern states of Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, and institutes like the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences and North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS). 

Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina recently wrote a letter to Indian PM Modi conveying her condolences in the backdrop of the Covid crisis in the country. She "expressed her sympathy for the Indian people and reiterated Bangladesh's support to stand by her closest neighboyr India during their critical time and expressed readiness to offer support in every possible way", Bangladesh foreign ministry said.

Amid the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic in India, 42 countries have pledged support to New Delhi. Assistance from 20 countries has already reached. The aid includes oxygen-producing equipments, ventilators, oxygen cylinders.

In India's neighbourhood, Mauritius, Bangladesh, and Bhutan have reached out. Bhutan will be supplying 40 metric tonnes of liquid oxygen to Assam via a new plant from Motanga Industrial Estate in eastern Bhutan's Samdrup Jongkhar district. Mauritius had also sent 200 oxygen concentrators.