India - The Rising Phoenix

Seventy years ago, at a time when people were enduring the deadly aftermath of Britain's historic decision to relinquish the sub-continent and carve it into two new nations along religious lines, it was Canada who was concerned with the casualties due to both disease as well as violence, the Canadian Red Cross donated penicillin to its sister organizations in India.

On October 14, RCAF Dakota KN 665 left the United Kingdom carrying 139 cases of penicillin. After stopping in Karachi, Pakistan, where it off-loaded 47 cases, it flew on to New Delhi, India, where 92 cases were off-loaded, the statement said.The doses were received on October 17, 1947, by then Health Minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, alongside Dr Jivraj Mehta, Director General of Health Services, and Sardar Balwant Singh Puri of the Indian Red Cross.

Today, almost 74 years later since receiving the 92 doses of penicillin, India is returning the gesture made in 1947. In a tweet on February 15, Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, said regulatory approvals from Canada are being awaited to ship doses of the Covishield vaccine within a month. According to Hindustan Times, around 5 lakh doses were agreed to be sent to Canada in a conversation held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Apart from Canada, India has sent COVID-19 vaccines to nations including the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar.

There’s nothing like a devastating health crisis to shake any country’s foundation to its core, and the coronavirus pandemic has been proof of that. But what cannot be ignored is how countries across the world come together to fight it. For a country that houses the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, India has certainly not shied away from proving true the phrase ‘What are friends for?’