Georgia cardiologist part of team working to help India COVID-19 patients

It's nearly 10 p.m. on a Thursday, and Dr. Sreeni Gangasani is grabbing a cup of chai tea with his wife and daughter, getting ready for another late night.

The Northside Hospital Gwinnett cardiologist has already worked a full shift.

Now, for the next three or four hours, Dr. Gangasani will be seeing COVID-19 patients virtually. 

He sitting at home on his laptop in Duluth.

Indian American doctor sits in a wood-paneled home office on laptop.

Cardiologist Dr. Sreeni Gangasani is part of a team of US doctors with ties to India trying to help the country cope with a catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak. (Eli Jordan/FOX 5 Atlanta)

They are about 8,500 miles away in India, sick with the coronavirus and trying to stay out of the hospital.

MORE: India's COVID-19 death toll 3rd highest in world at 300,000 amid slow vaccine drive

"So, what they feel is anxious," Dr. Gangasani says.  "They're isolated. They're in a room by themselves. Each person, when they get a little bit more cough, a little bit more fever, they're getting anxious: 'Okay, am I getting sicker? Do I need to go to the hospital?'"

He speaks with a woman who is concerned about her father, who recently tested positive for the coronavirus.

Others patients just want to check in with a provider.

"Some of the patients come every day," he says. "Every day they come onto the platform, talk to the doctor, feel good that, 'Okay, I am still okay.’"

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As India's COVID-19 crisis intensified this spring, Dr. Gangasani and some of his colleagues, who grew up in India, started trying to find a way to help.

His parents and two brothers live in Hyderabad, a city in southern India.

A doctor and his wife, son and daughter stand behind his parents, who are sittingin chairs.

Dr. Sreeni Gangasani of Duluth, Georgia, grew up in southern India, where his parents and two brothers live.

Gangasani twice canceled trips home to visit them as the outbreak in India worsened.

"We started noticing that so many people are going to the hospitals and so many people are dying," he says.  "The death rate went 3,000, to 4,000, to 5,000, every day!"

When Gangasani's father got the virus, he worked the phones from Georgia, connecting with local doctors and friends, trying to help his dad stay out of a hospital.

"Then, my mom got sick a week later, and my brother got sick a week later," he says. 

All three recovered, but many others are still struggling, as are some hospitals.

"When so many people get sick at one time, you cannot take care of all the patients," Gangasani says.  "The same thing happened in US.  The same thing happened in Europe.  The same thing happened in many countries."

With his wife Madhavi's help, Dr. Gangasani is working with other volunteer doctors from the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) and the non-profit Sewa International, providing virtual house calls for COVID-19 patients through the new online platform eGlobalDoctors, which Gangasani co-founded.

The hope, he says, is to shift some of the burdens away from overwhelmed physicians and hospitals.

"The system is not set up to take care of so many patients at one time," Gangasani says. "So, the goal was to get patients treated at home, if possible, to avoid the hospitalizations.

The doctors volunteer to take calls for 4 or 5 hours at a time, many of them working after they have finished their regular work hours.

The consultations are free and open to anyone who needs help.

Since they launched the online platform in May, Dr. Gangasani estimated they have helped about 1,500 COVID-19 patients in India.

"We know what we've during is really a drop in the ocean," Gangasani says.  "But, we know that each drop counts."

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