Community support has been the backbone of the fight against the pandemic during India’s second wave of COVID-19. Medical resources and infrastructure took a serious hit and resulted in the heavy loss of lives due to the deadly B.1.617 variant of the novel coronavirus.
The nation has recorded more than 3,00,000 deaths due to COVID-19, adding almost 40 per cent of the total deaths only since March this year, according to official data. However, as the silver lining, people from across the nation have joined hands in this time and come forward to help the suffering population in their own little ways. Various organisations are working on ground to help the people while some are doing all they can from home via social media, helping in filtering available medical resources and also boosting the mental health of patients.
Khalsa Aid India to the rescue With the motto of “Recognise the whole human race as one”, Khalsa Aid India has been helping people in need of medical resources on a war footing. The organisation has been active since before the pandemic and is known for providing assistance to the victims of natural disasters and other conflicts. They began a crowdfunding drive on May 2 this year which received an overwhelming response, raising almost 1 crore of funds in a span of three days. According to Khalsa Aid India’s fundraiser page, the organisation is actively helping people in and around Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) and has successfully raised more than4 crores.
They have distributed more than 900 oxygen concentrators so far (which cost anywhere between 44,000 to85,000 each) and aim to procure around 5000 concentrators so that they can reach other cities as well which are desperately in need of help. Sanjay Kakkar, a beneficiary from Gurugram whose father succumbed to COVID-19 and mother and wife were struggling from the disease, reached out to the organisation after four days of an endless search for oxygen cylinders. He was provided all required aid to help in the treatment of his family. Sanjay and various others have also shared their experience of being helped by Khalsa Aid India on their fundraiser page on impactguru.com.
Talking to Team Urban Update, Kulbeer Singh, a Khalsa Aid India volunteer from Delhi, said, “The first initiative was taken in Delhi by procuring oxygen concentrators from the market and providing them to the people in need. The team is continuously extending its reach in various states across the nation and the foundation has now reached to more than 20 states in the country including Bihar, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Helping the people has always been the motive of the foundation. Last year too, the organisation organised langar services to feed the poor during the pandemic.
The organisation receives multiple SOS calls daily. The organisation follows a simple process – after receiving a call, a volunteer is sent to the caller’s address with an oxygen concentrator. Once the caller no more needs the concentrator, the volunteer retrieves it, sanitises and packs it to distribute it to others in need.
Hemkunt Foundation NGO
Founded by Irinder Singh Ahluwalia in 2010, Hemkunt Foundation has been providing aid and assistance to the community for several causes. During the second wave of COVID-19, the organisation lent a helping hand for people in need. Even in the first wave, the NGO provided cooked meal to various migrant workers who were forced to go back to their villages due to their sudden unemployment. It started relief work in April this year around Gurugram, Delhi and the surrounding regions, when the country was suffering with acute shortage of oxygen cylinders and other health infrastructure
The foundation has set up a dedicated helpline (9990691313) where people can reach out to them in times of need. The volunteers working with the organisation faced difficulties in procuring oxygen cylinders and shifting them from one place to another due to various curbs on their movement. According to an article by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the organisation received 10,000 calls on a daily basis at a time when India’s health infrastructure was stretched to its limit. To meet the growing demand of oxygen, the foundation also built a medical facility in Gurugram, Haryana, with a capacity of 700 beds, including 24X7 ambulance service, food and other services.
The foundation received big donations from its YouTube supporters such as Slayy Point, which raised `50 lakh for the cause, and Indian cricketer Rishabh Pant, who also showed his support for the foundation. The organisation is also setting up ‘mini-centres’ which contain almost 20 oxygen concentrators, so that critical COVID-19 patients do not have to rush to Gurugram. Now, the foundation has enough oxygen to even help hospitals who are facing shortage of
oxygen supply.
COVID facility Rakabganj Gurudwara
Rakabganj Gurudwara in Delhi set up its own COVID-19 facility with a capacity of 300 beds which became functional on May 10. COVID positive patients with oxygen levels only above 85 were admitted in the COVID care centre. The infrastructure in the facility has been provided by the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC) and the Delhi government has deployed 50 doctors and 150 nurses at the facility.
The facility is stocked with oxygen concentrators, Remdesivir and Fabiflu for emergency patients. The patients who need 20 litres of oxygen per minute were eligible to be admitted in the facility. The cost of their treatment, including the ambulance charges and cost of food, is borne by the DSGMC.
Miranda House – Managing education as well as health
As COVID-19 cases rose continuously in the Capital, Miranda House, University of Delhi, formed a health desk which consisted of almost 300 student volunteers, to help and guide those who were in need of assistance. The team regularly updates the spreadsheet database through various resources in the region and guides people who have different medical needs such as oxygen cylinders, Remdesivir, medicines, etc
Social media – a boon in times of need
In contemporary times, social media is the easiest way to reach out to the masses quickly and this facility has helped various people during the second wave in arranging medical resources in the shortest possible time. Starting from March this year, social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were flooded with posts of people who were in need of medicals supplies. Soon, people who were available to fend for medical resources for those in need came forward and began quickly responding to posts requesting help. This greatly helped in cutting down on the time COVID positive patients spent on looking for available resources
around them.
According to an analysis by Bellingcat Investigative Tech Team, towards the end of March, tweets containing the keywords ‘Delhi’, ‘oxygen’ and ‘urgent’ were posted every 24 seconds for help. Dhoondh.com, a Delhi-based social media initiative, matches the requests of COVID-19 patients it receives with potential plasma donors. The platform received more than a thousand requests and enquiries daily via Instagram and Twitter direct messages, which adequately depicts the advantages of digital media.
The country’s youth, especially those with high number of followers on social media platforms, started to promote messages and posts from people who needed medical resources. Individual efforts like those of Indian cricketer BV Srinivas, Bollywood actor Sonu Sood and Member of Parliament Tejaswi Surya, helped the people on a large scale. Such well known personalities with a substantial follower base on social media amplified the requests of the people in need. This made it easier for them to connect with those who had access to these resources.
Various COVID-19 resource groups are operating actively on different social media platforms and provide pan India support in arranging medical resources for COVID-19 patients. Covidaidresources, covid911 and many other social media groups are active on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter providing round-the-clock information about availability of medical resources as well as spreading awareness regarding the medicines used in the treatment and their effects and side-effects.
Mental Health – a by-product of COVIID-19
Mental wellbeing has been a serious issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, their mental health deteriorated further during the second wave as the number of deaths and infections crossed all previous records and there was lack of information on how to stay safe from the new variants of coronavirus. The isolation among COVID-19 patients and loss of loved ones during the pandemic pushed many into the deep pits of depression, anxiety and stress.
A study conducted on 5000 elderly people by Agewell Foundation revealed that as much as 82.4 per cent of the people suffering from COVID-19 symptoms or undergoing treatment complained of suffering from anxiety, stress, sleeplessness, nightmares and depression. The disease has taken a heavy toll on mental health of the people and tackling this has been as important as defending against the deadly coronavirus.
Female doctors extending help in times of pandemic
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the doctors to help those in need, a group of five women doctors in Delhi began providing free consultations through video conferencing. The group launched a helpline in Delhi’s Vasant Vihar area which focussed mainly on providing mental health guidelines to the people who faced issues like stress, anxiety and fear.
In addition to the mental health support, the group also responded to the queries on phone, video conferencing and WhatsApp. The doctors have been responding to almost 800 queries every day and also prescribed treatment to those who shared CT (Computed Tomography) reports. The patients who were looking for beds and oxygen were also aided by the doctors’ group and were connected with hospitals across the capital.
iCALL – Call for Help
A special counselling service named “iCALL” was started by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in collaboration with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), for those facing mental issues during the pandemic. The service has been made available in 13 Indian states as an attempt to utilise technological advances as psycho-social tools which can be used to manage mental health needs of the people.
The pandemic has deepened the mental health crisis among citizens and especially among women from marginalised communities. In this regard, iCALL has been providing telephonic services to the people in need by bridging the gap between the providers and beneficiaries and providing them with an effective and affordable platform for quality help via telephone.
Team Urban Update spoke to a volunteer from iCALL helpline to know more about it. She said, “The helpline provides referral support to patients in accordance with their needs such as oxygen cylinders, availability of beds or doctors, and medicines, and is operating pan India.
People who are in isolation or are undergoing COVID-19 treatment are provided mental help as they experience stress and anxiety due to the loneliness and stigma around the disease.” The volunteer added that the organisation has a team of trained and qualified psychologists and doctors who help the people round-the-clock via telephone and social media. She added that the helpline has been providing support to the patients since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued its service in the second wave as well.
Conclusion
The second wave of COVID-19 in the country affected everybody equally. Despite this, the efforts and intentions that the community has shown in coming together and standing united against the disease are commendable. Only a few of the many examples are mentioned but people across the nation are helping each other and doing all that they can in their individual space to make things a little better. Even when the government machinery and health infrastructure have been hit seriously due to the widespread chaos in the country, humanity is still breathing and making efforts to make ends meet.
Initiative to foster conversations in era of quarantine
Many small individual efforts are made by the people to make things a little easier for the people battling the deadly disease. One such initiative was taken by the students of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) who started an initiative called ‘All Ears’ for providing mental help to the people in need. Anweshan Bose, one of the founding members, said, “It has almost been a month since we started the initiative for helping the people in need of mental help. We have a team of seven people (five from IIMC) and we have reached almost 50-60 people from around the country via social media. The organisation is available on almost every social media platform and the respondents are free to interact with the members. We allot communicators to the applicants based on their preferences (like the gender of the communicator or the language the applicant wants to
communicate in).”
He also added that the initiative focuses on interaction, where moderators and respondents are clubbed together in a group to speak about anything they want to share. For every respondent, we try to commence as many as seven sessions (one session every week) to make sure that the respondents have ample opportunities to feel comfortable and speak. The team is strictly directed to give no advice or suggestions as the purpose is to only facilitate conversation and listen. As per the feedbacks of the respondents, after the sessions, they feel comfortable in processing things even though there is no psychological treatment involved, he added.
Individual efforts like those of Indian cricketer BV Srinivas, Bollywood actor Sonu Sood and Member of Parliament Tejaswi Surya, helped the people on a large scale. Such well known personalities with a substantial follower base on social media amplified the requests of the people in need