After Losing Mother To Covid, Chennai Woman Now Running 'Oxygen Auto'

After having lost her mother to Covid due to lack of oxygen, this Chennai woman took it upon herself to help patients via her 'Oxygen Auto'.

36-year-old Seetha Devi is helping many breathe. Rechristened Chennai's 'Oxygen Woman', Ms Devi lost her mother to Covid. Since then, she took up the responsibility to help people who need oxygen. Her blue auto-rickshaw, fitted with an oxygen cylinder, has been a lifesaver for many. She waits outside the Rajiv Gandhi Hospital offering refuge to patients in need of oxygen till they got a bed. Often, she also lends her cylinder to ambulances with patients that ran out of oxygen. "We saved more than three hundred patients gasping for breath that time, no questions were asked, no money was received," says Seetha Devi about the deadly second wave when hospitals in Chennai were short of oxygen and beds with serpentine queues of ambulances waiting with critical patients. A daughter of a porter who grew up on the streets of Chennai is now a social worker helping street children with education. It is a personal loss that triggered Seetha to serve Covid patients through her 'oxygen auto'.