This Team of Avengers provides free food, medicines & oxygen support to corona-hit

NEW DELHI: They might not be Thor or the Hulk, but in thought and action, they are heroes. Calling themselves Team Avengers, this group of over 50 working professionals from Delhi-NCR and abroad are providing free food, medicines, oxygen support, doctors’ consultations and counselling to Covid-affected families. The real-life do-gooders also provide food packets and medical kits to the poor and homeless in and around Delhi.


Formed with six members on April 26, Team Avengers is currently engaged in service in south Delhi, west Delhi, Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon, and will start work in north Delhi soon. With a moniker like theirs, the first question to Abhijeet Dutta, team member, is obviously about the group’s name. Dutta smiled and explained that the team chose this nomenclature because each person involved possessed some power that is being used to bring solace to suffering people during this frightening wave of Covid infections.

Giving details about the group, Dutta said, "We are working professionals, not an NGO. We came together to provide Covid relief and many people joined us in this effort.”

Dutta said, “We pooled our funds to begin with. Friends based in the United States, Canada, Germany and Singapore are also pitching in and providing technological assistance and monetary contributions. They also helped bring some doctors and experts onboard to enable us to offer consultation and counselling to Covid patients and their families.”

Colonel Shashank Kaushal (retd), a core member, added that the group's name intends to send out a message that even without superpowers, common people can do big things in easing the sufferings of fellow humans. “Some patients whom we helped later joined our group as volunteers after recovering from Covid,” he said.

On a WhatsApp group, the members update daily receipts of donations and other services in different locations accompanied by photographs to maintain transparency.

Roli Singh, chartered accountant and group member, shared why she was motivated to join the group. “I saw a post on social media about a 19-year-old girl desperately seeking a hospital bed for her Covid-positive mother. The girl’s father also had Covid while her grandparents were bedridden,” said Singh. “The teenager was struggling with having to do everything on her own. We managed to find a bed, but her mother died due to infection-related complications. It broke my heart and I decided I had to help more such families.” Deep Shikha Singh Khan, who has been delivering the food packets, said, “When we saw people in distress, we wanted to do something to encourage them.”

The group began by sharing verified leads about the availability of oxygen cylinders, beds and medicines in the hospitals with the affected people. Ruchi Mahajan, a life coach, said, “We then realised that we could be a bit more useful and, therefore, started distributing oxygen cans to critical Covid patients. We also started giving cooked meals to families recovering from Covid and to people on the roads such as daily-wage earners and autorickshaw drivers.”

Taking vengeance against the insidious coronavirus also fills Subha Sodhi, an IT consultant, with pride — and a sense of achievement at being able to contribute to the act of saving lives. To break the chain of Covid transmission at the lower economic level, the Avengers now also distribute medical kits comprising face masks, hand sanitisers and vitamins to domestic workers, dailywage labourers and the homeless.


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