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U.S. provides ventilators to Bhutan for COVID-19 response

U.S. Embassy and Consulates in India

The United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is donating 15 state-of-the-art ventilators to the Royal Government of Bhutan for its fight against COVID-19.

“We look forward to continued collaboration between our countries as we work together to combat the COVID-19 pandemic,” U.S. Ambassador to India Kenneth I. Juster said in late November 2020.

The ventilators are compact and easy to deploy. They support a range of functions, allowing health care workers to respond to patients’ fluctuating needs. USAID also is funding a package of support that includes warranties.

The donation builds upon the U.S. $1 million that USAID committed to the Bhutan Foundation in April 2020 to support COVID-19 relief. In coordination with the Royal Government of Bhutan, USAID and the Bhutan Foundation are strengthening diagnostic laboratory capabilities and clinical case management, providing virtual training for health care providers and lab personnel, and developing communications materials on COVID-19 prevention, readiness and response. The grant includes micro-, small- and medium-size enterprise support initiatives to assist with Bhutan’s economic recovery from the pandemic. In September 2020, USAID, in coordination with the Bhutan Foundation, donated 200,000 cloth masks to Bhutan’s Ministry of Health for distribution to vulnerable communities, including the elderly and pregnant women, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Through USAID and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. works closely with Bhutanese public health authorities to advance shared objectives.

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