India rushes Covid-19 medical team to Kuwait, says ready to help Gulf countries

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked Foreign Minister S Jaishankar to prepare for the medical team for Kuwait

Updated on: Apr 11, 2020, 21:06:22 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The Indian Air Force on Saturday flew down a 15-member medical team to Kuwait to help tackle the increasing spread of coronavirus infection. The army team was sent after Kuwait Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah called Prime Minister Narendra Modi for assistance.

India has sent its rapid response team for Covid-19 to Kuwait, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar tweeted (Twitter/@DrSJaishankar)

External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar had followed up on this phone conversation and later asked Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat to organise a military team of doctors and healthcare professionals.

Jaishankar made the announcement on Twitter soon after the air force’s C 130 Hercules transporter landed in Kuwait. “India’s rapid response team arrives in Kuwait,” he said.

A South Block official said Prime Minister Modi had instructed Jaishankar to send the team to assess the level of infection after the call from Kuwait PM on April 1.

“This is because of the special relationship between India and the Gulf countries. At a time when each country is for its own, India cannot let its Gulf allies down,” said a senior official.

According to officials, more teams would be sent if required.

Indians constitute the largest group of expatriates with an estimated population of about 10 lakh in the State of Kuwait.

A foreign ministry statement said the medical team is expected to stay in Kuwait for two weeks during which it will render medical assistance in testing and treatment of the afflicted persons and training their personnel.

India has already supplied Hydroxy-Choloroquine to Bahrain after the King spoke to PM Modi on April 6. PM Modi also asked the Sultan of Oman during an April 7 telephonic conversation about any medical requirements.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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