Covid relief for Indian slums
Donation protected
Update: Rahul is raising money to help this cause
What is he going to be doing?
He will be cycling for a full working day which is 8 hours on a spin bike (8am-5pm), so please send him all the love in the messages!
How can you help?
Please share the page with this message to your friends and families and remember to tick 'Rahul Vekaria' under contributor!
And if you have a bike, join him and send some pictures or videos to us!
1. What critical issues are we working on? What is our main intervention ?
We are two graduate students from University of Cambridge (Arastu Sharma, Microsoft PhD Scholar, Physics, Jesus College & Supriya Bansal, Research Masters Criminology, Wolfson College) working on ground in India to help highly vulnerable families. It is well established that early medication and proper nutrition can go a long way in reducing hospitalisation. This is also important to curb the spread of the virus as we are providing patients with treatment and guidelines early on. In the second wave, India has seen a massive breakdown of the supply chain network for medicines, oxygen and hospital beds. In the wake of this, lower middle class families and underprivileged people living in slums who lack these resources even in normal times, have no access to even over-the-counter medicines to fight the pandemic. This is more so evident in Rajasthan, where our operation is based, where large hospitals are gasping for oxygen with only a few hours of supply left. Access to hospital beds have been rare even with political pressure, as we’ve personally been trying to seek help for extended families, and this is almost inaccessible to 99% of the population.
Our aim has been to create a supply network for such vulnerable families and reduce chances of hospitalization by intervening with help of awareness, early detection, telemedicine, early medicine and nutrition based recovery. We based our program on the NHS covid protocol telemedicine system, by establishing a general helpline to connect all the people in need to a single platform. To spread the word about the helpline as well as information on being vigilant of symptoms, we involved social media campaigning and pamphlet distribution. The helpline is available to symptomatic people as well as those who seek general health advice. On receiving the call, the helpline connects the patients to our volunteer doctors and psychiatrists for right advice on a case-by-case basis, who in turn prescribe medicines and tests. With the help of donations and personal expenditure, food and medicines sourced from the government as well as private facilities are delivered to the patient's house. Other emergency supplies, such as oxygen cylinders and concentrators have also been supplied in case of availability. In case of emergencies, our nurses are available to set up an oxygen system at home. With the supplies in constraint, we had to establish this network with the help of a few government officials as well as generous citizens.
The lack of hospital beds has been the major cause of the debacle in Indian healthcare system. We believe that with the right interventions by proper prescription and medication at an early stage of the disease, we will be able to restrict severity of the infection and reduce hospitalization. Our efforts have already shown results with as many 25 families from the pilot stage of the program haven’t seen any increase in infection severity.
2. Which groups / individuals are we working with? How many?
This project has an uniquely devoted set of 40+ individuals who are trying to do their best. We have around 25+ doctors volunteering and taking calls who are already on duty in their respective hospitals. Our team of doctors includes ENT specialists, cardiologist, paediatrician, neurologist, gynaecologist and psychiatrists to meet the unique demands of our patients. We have a dedicated staff of 2 handling the helpline that accepts calls even at 3 am in the morning. Our devoted team of 12 social workers help in coordinating sourcing medicines, preparation of educated prescriptions, telemedicine and emergency supply delivery. We have hired 3 delivery staff who are ready to deliver medicines, cylinders and food throughout the night, who are provided with PPE kits for their own safety. We have nurses to deliver oxygen cylinders/concentrators to homes on request. We have volunteers helping with locating hospital beds by scourging on social media for hours.
Starting from a small pilot project, we have been able to expand out connections to following organisations, who now are our collaborators:
Hospitals that have helped in providing home care supplies and medical advice:
Sharma hospital
Kalra hospital
Tarani hospital
Old glory hospital
Darsh hospital
Mobile Surgical Unit, Government of Rajasthan (Has helped us in providing emergency services in slum areas)
Social and Education Organisations that have helped us reach the patients:
Suresh Gyan Vihar University
Raji charitable trust
Suresh sharma foundation
Sahitya sadawart samiti
Sakhi Bal Niketan
Team of Doctors currently is led by:
Dr Kanika, Dr Suhsrut, Dr Shivam, Dr Vikesh Vij, Dr Yogesh Tarani, Dr Balveen, Dr Tanmay, Dr Goyir, Dr Biban, Dr Asha, Dr Naina, Dr Pranay, Dr Pranzal, Dr Sanyukta and many more.
We also have received the support of State cabinet minister Pratap Singh Kachiriyawas (Minister of Transport and Soldier Welfare, Rajasthan). Mr. Kachariyawas has helped us in sourcing a few oxygen cylinders for free everyday. Private individuals and government agencies have also helped in providing Remdivisir sources to our patients. With donations from individuals we also were able to purchase and distribute 3 oxygen concentrators.
3. Where are we diverting funding to?
- Medicines for people who cannot afford to buy them
- Providing food door-to-door
- Paying our incredible staff of delivery, helpline, nurses
- If future funds allow, acquiring more oxygen concentrators
4. Which states are we working on? What is our current geographic coverage?
We are based in Jaipur and most of the calls we receive are from Jaipur. However, we have also received calls from other cities like Meerut, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad etc. While we are not able to deliver medicines, food or oxygen outside Jaipur, we still connect the patients to our volunteer doctors who are able to write them prescriptions.
5. What are the states/ regions they plan to expand their COVID relief to?
Majorly working in Rajasthan, targeting vulnerable families in slum areas of Jaipur and around by districts. Rajasthan is one of the worst hit states in India, but has received insufficient attention in terms of funding.
FUNDING
1. What sort of activities would our funding be used for?
Primary cost of the program entails the distribution of medicines to vulnerable families, running the telemedicine helpline as well providing for our staff on ground. To cater for an individual family of four, we are spending around an average of Rs. 2000 (Cost of Ivermactin, anti-biotics, paracetamol, cough syrup, steroids, inhaler puffs, pulse-oximeter etc.). Due to limitation of current funds in the pilot project we are limited to provide only for around 20 families a day, and are running out of funds.
Our doctors are conducting volunteer work and have shown incredible strength of humanity as they work extra hours in hospitals at the same time. In the future with increasing numbers of calls for help, we might need to hire some on-duty doctors, who will charge around the sum of Rs. 50, per call.
Our incredible staff of delivery, helpline, nurses are the bedrock of the program. Most of our staff is working on minimum wage, to serve the community yet provide for their own families. With increasing load we will need to expand the staff.
One of our major causes is to help people recover and survive the pandemic with a balanced nutritious diet. Underprivileged communities have lost their jobs and our hit worst by the pandemic. Any requests for food are currently being donated by Temple organisations and other similar generous individuals. We are using our funds to also provide food door-to-door.
Most of the people calling us on the helpline, are calling after an exhausting search for hospitals, doctors and resources, and when they call us we want to be able to provide them with whatever they need to fight. If future funds allow, acquiring more oxygen concentrators, oxygen cylinder supply and paying for a remdisiver course will be our next goal.
2. What is the minimum + maximum tranche of funding we require?
Total Target - GBP 10,000 - provide for 5000 vulnerable families (Currently raised GBP 2000)
- With the help of fundraising and personal expenditure, we have been able to raise an approximate amount of GBP 2000, from India and abroad.
- Our initial aim was to cover for 5000 families who come under the adversity of covid infection, with an average cost of Rs. 2000 per family.
- Regardless of the lack of initial resources and funding, we have been able to establish a successful pilot project, as can be seen from the evidence.
- We were able to use this money to start the initiative but with increasing calls we need more funding to be able to meet the growing demands.
- To reach our total, a help of 7000 GBP can set us up for sometime and help reach our target, and we can continue to provide these services for free to patients who are suffering the most.
3. Would they prefer to receive oxygen concentrators or money, subject to them being set up to effectively use the concentrators?
- We need money right now to keep funding our stuff, medicines and food. But we are also happy to receive oxygen concentrators if possible.
- Any other support in the sense of sending medicines like Fabiflu, Remdisiver, Pulse-oximeters can go a long way.
IMPACT REPORTING
1. What kind of impact reporting/documentation can we provide?
The back-end of the telemedicine service provided with help of an excel sheet with all the information of patients and follow up trails. The coordination of doctors and patients is done through a common whatsapp group. Documentation of the number of patients treated as well as the information on delivery of medicines, food and other supplies will be provided through the excel sheet. Impact reporting will be shown with help of screenshots and details from the whatsapp coordination group to show the hard-work of our volunteer doctors.
We have invoices of all medicines, food, delivery and salaries of hired staff including helpline and delivery workers with detailed invoice trails.
Yes, we are maintaining records of people who are coming to us for help. Everyday we are helping around 25 families with our team of volunteer doctors, who have telecommunicated to them and wrote them prescriptions. In some instances, where the patients are unable to buy medicines, we have also delivered medicines to them. We are also providing food for people who are unable to cook or afford it during these times. We have also helped multiple people by providing them with oxygen cylinders and oxygen concentrators (a small number of concentrators has been imported from China from personal funds). Additionally, we have found hospital beds and emergency medications for people calling our helpline. Numbers for all of these people are available, and anyone can be called for verification.
The link to the excel sheet detailing all the patients currently, helped through the pandemic:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BCKRULCAno_USe5uhH0XFYxOiRGelemYs__3YQqpvfM/edit?usp=sharing
Excel sheet with patient names
What is he going to be doing?
He will be cycling for a full working day which is 8 hours on a spin bike (8am-5pm), so please send him all the love in the messages!
How can you help?
Please share the page with this message to your friends and families and remember to tick 'Rahul Vekaria' under contributor!
And if you have a bike, join him and send some pictures or videos to us!
1. What critical issues are we working on? What is our main intervention ?
We are two graduate students from University of Cambridge (Arastu Sharma, Microsoft PhD Scholar, Physics, Jesus College & Supriya Bansal, Research Masters Criminology, Wolfson College) working on ground in India to help highly vulnerable families. It is well established that early medication and proper nutrition can go a long way in reducing hospitalisation. This is also important to curb the spread of the virus as we are providing patients with treatment and guidelines early on. In the second wave, India has seen a massive breakdown of the supply chain network for medicines, oxygen and hospital beds. In the wake of this, lower middle class families and underprivileged people living in slums who lack these resources even in normal times, have no access to even over-the-counter medicines to fight the pandemic. This is more so evident in Rajasthan, where our operation is based, where large hospitals are gasping for oxygen with only a few hours of supply left. Access to hospital beds have been rare even with political pressure, as we’ve personally been trying to seek help for extended families, and this is almost inaccessible to 99% of the population.
Our aim has been to create a supply network for such vulnerable families and reduce chances of hospitalization by intervening with help of awareness, early detection, telemedicine, early medicine and nutrition based recovery. We based our program on the NHS covid protocol telemedicine system, by establishing a general helpline to connect all the people in need to a single platform. To spread the word about the helpline as well as information on being vigilant of symptoms, we involved social media campaigning and pamphlet distribution. The helpline is available to symptomatic people as well as those who seek general health advice. On receiving the call, the helpline connects the patients to our volunteer doctors and psychiatrists for right advice on a case-by-case basis, who in turn prescribe medicines and tests. With the help of donations and personal expenditure, food and medicines sourced from the government as well as private facilities are delivered to the patient's house. Other emergency supplies, such as oxygen cylinders and concentrators have also been supplied in case of availability. In case of emergencies, our nurses are available to set up an oxygen system at home. With the supplies in constraint, we had to establish this network with the help of a few government officials as well as generous citizens.
The lack of hospital beds has been the major cause of the debacle in Indian healthcare system. We believe that with the right interventions by proper prescription and medication at an early stage of the disease, we will be able to restrict severity of the infection and reduce hospitalization. Our efforts have already shown results with as many 25 families from the pilot stage of the program haven’t seen any increase in infection severity.
2. Which groups / individuals are we working with? How many?
This project has an uniquely devoted set of 40+ individuals who are trying to do their best. We have around 25+ doctors volunteering and taking calls who are already on duty in their respective hospitals. Our team of doctors includes ENT specialists, cardiologist, paediatrician, neurologist, gynaecologist and psychiatrists to meet the unique demands of our patients. We have a dedicated staff of 2 handling the helpline that accepts calls even at 3 am in the morning. Our devoted team of 12 social workers help in coordinating sourcing medicines, preparation of educated prescriptions, telemedicine and emergency supply delivery. We have hired 3 delivery staff who are ready to deliver medicines, cylinders and food throughout the night, who are provided with PPE kits for their own safety. We have nurses to deliver oxygen cylinders/concentrators to homes on request. We have volunteers helping with locating hospital beds by scourging on social media for hours.
Starting from a small pilot project, we have been able to expand out connections to following organisations, who now are our collaborators:
Hospitals that have helped in providing home care supplies and medical advice:
Sharma hospital
Kalra hospital
Tarani hospital
Old glory hospital
Darsh hospital
Mobile Surgical Unit, Government of Rajasthan (Has helped us in providing emergency services in slum areas)
Social and Education Organisations that have helped us reach the patients:
Suresh Gyan Vihar University
Raji charitable trust
Suresh sharma foundation
Sahitya sadawart samiti
Sakhi Bal Niketan
Team of Doctors currently is led by:
Dr Kanika, Dr Suhsrut, Dr Shivam, Dr Vikesh Vij, Dr Yogesh Tarani, Dr Balveen, Dr Tanmay, Dr Goyir, Dr Biban, Dr Asha, Dr Naina, Dr Pranay, Dr Pranzal, Dr Sanyukta and many more.
We also have received the support of State cabinet minister Pratap Singh Kachiriyawas (Minister of Transport and Soldier Welfare, Rajasthan). Mr. Kachariyawas has helped us in sourcing a few oxygen cylinders for free everyday. Private individuals and government agencies have also helped in providing Remdivisir sources to our patients. With donations from individuals we also were able to purchase and distribute 3 oxygen concentrators.
3. Where are we diverting funding to?
- Medicines for people who cannot afford to buy them
- Providing food door-to-door
- Paying our incredible staff of delivery, helpline, nurses
- If future funds allow, acquiring more oxygen concentrators
4. Which states are we working on? What is our current geographic coverage?
We are based in Jaipur and most of the calls we receive are from Jaipur. However, we have also received calls from other cities like Meerut, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad etc. While we are not able to deliver medicines, food or oxygen outside Jaipur, we still connect the patients to our volunteer doctors who are able to write them prescriptions.
5. What are the states/ regions they plan to expand their COVID relief to?
Majorly working in Rajasthan, targeting vulnerable families in slum areas of Jaipur and around by districts. Rajasthan is one of the worst hit states in India, but has received insufficient attention in terms of funding.
FUNDING
1. What sort of activities would our funding be used for?
Primary cost of the program entails the distribution of medicines to vulnerable families, running the telemedicine helpline as well providing for our staff on ground. To cater for an individual family of four, we are spending around an average of Rs. 2000 (Cost of Ivermactin, anti-biotics, paracetamol, cough syrup, steroids, inhaler puffs, pulse-oximeter etc.). Due to limitation of current funds in the pilot project we are limited to provide only for around 20 families a day, and are running out of funds.
Our doctors are conducting volunteer work and have shown incredible strength of humanity as they work extra hours in hospitals at the same time. In the future with increasing numbers of calls for help, we might need to hire some on-duty doctors, who will charge around the sum of Rs. 50, per call.
Our incredible staff of delivery, helpline, nurses are the bedrock of the program. Most of our staff is working on minimum wage, to serve the community yet provide for their own families. With increasing load we will need to expand the staff.
One of our major causes is to help people recover and survive the pandemic with a balanced nutritious diet. Underprivileged communities have lost their jobs and our hit worst by the pandemic. Any requests for food are currently being donated by Temple organisations and other similar generous individuals. We are using our funds to also provide food door-to-door.
Most of the people calling us on the helpline, are calling after an exhausting search for hospitals, doctors and resources, and when they call us we want to be able to provide them with whatever they need to fight. If future funds allow, acquiring more oxygen concentrators, oxygen cylinder supply and paying for a remdisiver course will be our next goal.
2. What is the minimum + maximum tranche of funding we require?
Total Target - GBP 10,000 - provide for 5000 vulnerable families (Currently raised GBP 2000)
- With the help of fundraising and personal expenditure, we have been able to raise an approximate amount of GBP 2000, from India and abroad.
- Our initial aim was to cover for 5000 families who come under the adversity of covid infection, with an average cost of Rs. 2000 per family.
- Regardless of the lack of initial resources and funding, we have been able to establish a successful pilot project, as can be seen from the evidence.
- We were able to use this money to start the initiative but with increasing calls we need more funding to be able to meet the growing demands.
- To reach our total, a help of 7000 GBP can set us up for sometime and help reach our target, and we can continue to provide these services for free to patients who are suffering the most.
3. Would they prefer to receive oxygen concentrators or money, subject to them being set up to effectively use the concentrators?
- We need money right now to keep funding our stuff, medicines and food. But we are also happy to receive oxygen concentrators if possible.
- Any other support in the sense of sending medicines like Fabiflu, Remdisiver, Pulse-oximeters can go a long way.
IMPACT REPORTING
1. What kind of impact reporting/documentation can we provide?
The back-end of the telemedicine service provided with help of an excel sheet with all the information of patients and follow up trails. The coordination of doctors and patients is done through a common whatsapp group. Documentation of the number of patients treated as well as the information on delivery of medicines, food and other supplies will be provided through the excel sheet. Impact reporting will be shown with help of screenshots and details from the whatsapp coordination group to show the hard-work of our volunteer doctors.
We have invoices of all medicines, food, delivery and salaries of hired staff including helpline and delivery workers with detailed invoice trails.
Yes, we are maintaining records of people who are coming to us for help. Everyday we are helping around 25 families with our team of volunteer doctors, who have telecommunicated to them and wrote them prescriptions. In some instances, where the patients are unable to buy medicines, we have also delivered medicines to them. We are also providing food for people who are unable to cook or afford it during these times. We have also helped multiple people by providing them with oxygen cylinders and oxygen concentrators (a small number of concentrators has been imported from China from personal funds). Additionally, we have found hospital beds and emergency medications for people calling our helpline. Numbers for all of these people are available, and anyone can be called for verification.
The link to the excel sheet detailing all the patients currently, helped through the pandemic:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BCKRULCAno_USe5uhH0XFYxOiRGelemYs__3YQqpvfM/edit?usp=sharing
Excel sheet with patient names
Fundraising team (3)
Arastu Sharma
Organizer
England
Rahul Vekaria
Team member
Supriya Bansal
Team member
