New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV), in collaboration with the GiveIndia, a non-profit organisation, has initiated a drive to help protect our medical caregivers in the fight against coronavirus outbreak in the country. To support our healthcare workers and protect them from falling ill themselves in the line of duty.
Here are the Highlights of the #CaringForIndia Telethon:
Thank you donors for your generous contribution. Over Rs 2 crore raised at the end of the 2-hour telethonYou can still donate to help our medical caregivers fight the COVID-19 pandemic better. To know more about how you can help, click here:
https://special.ndtv.com/caring-for-india-77/donate-now
We started off with focusing on PPEs, then moved our efforts on testing, frankly we now focus on stopping the spread: Mohit Bhatnagar, Partner, Sequoia Capital
Dr. K V Thrilok Chandra, IAS., Special officer, Critical care support unit,Tele-ICU, Government of Karnataka explains how technology is helping bridge the gap in ICU specialist shortage Cloudphysician has partnered with us to take care of certain parts of the state with the real time monitoring of all these high risk cases in the ICU and with their intensivists in the back-end. It has really helped in augmenting the local resources which are available and also it acts like a force multiplier, so high quality health care is available and to guide the local manpower. There are both doctors there and nurses who are monitoring the patients. So this has helped in micro managing the patients but with a remote approach and also the same intensivits can handle more patients at the same time.
Dhruv Joshi, Director, Cloudphysician Healthcare on how the hub and spoke model with help of technology is providing access to ICU specialist doctors to places that lack or are short on such trained staff
Today we are working very closely with hospitals in districts in Karnataka and Maharashtra and we are actively engaging with other state governments and other hospitals in other states as well, including Orissa, Bihar, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. These are all states that have similar problems in the healthcare delivery system for ICU patients. And our solution can be used in all of these states and many more going forward to help improve the outcomes of patients.
Dr. Dileep Raman, Director, Cloudphysician Healthcare explains how tele-medicine technology is being used to provide services of ICU specialists in areas where there is a shortage given that only one in 10 ICUs in India have a fully trained ICU doctor bedside and there are only about 5,000 or so qualified intensivists in India today
Siraj Dhanani, Founder, CEO, InnAccel Technologies Private LimitedBack in March this year, we at InnAccel realised that non-invasive ventilation would be a critical and life-saving technology for respiratory support for COVID patients in hospital. Given that there were no indigenous solutions available, we moved rapidly on developing a SARSPRO - system that provides both HFNC & CPAP modes of non-invasive ventilation for COVID patients.
In parallel, we also developed India's first CPAP helmet interface for safe ventilation of COVID patients in collaboration with Thermax Global and doctors at Narayana Health in Bangalore. Both products were developed in a record time of 4 months and are now commercially available and in fact over 100 SARSPRO systems and about 600 helmet systems are being deployed in hospitals across India in August alone.
I would like to mention ACT's generous and timely support which has been crucial to the development launch and scaleup of this critical technology and has given us this opportunity to serve our nation at this time of need.
Nachiket Mor, Member, ACT Grants Advisory Group & Visiting Scientist, The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health on the telethon:
We know that the manner in which the disease progresses, almost 80% of the people who are infected recover without treatment necessary at all. The 20% that do need treatment, we also know that about 80% of those actually recover with basic oxygen therapy which comprises low flow oxygen and high flow oxygen - well before they need ventilation.
So, in both areas, ACT decided to intervene. On the low oxygen side, it was relatively simple to make available wherever there was demand, particularly in remote areas, in high impact states, the oxygen cylinders. But for HFNC (high flow nasal cannula), the high flow oxygen devices more work needed to be done. Because we needed to find a local entrepreneur that had the capability to develop a device that was at a low cost, to get it tested with a variety of hospitals and to get it approved and authorised.
So we played a partnership role to try and make this happen. And to successfully get out at far lower cost, domestically manufacture HFNC device in the system. Thus far we have supplied over 1000 cylinders and over 100 HFNC devices.
We keep track of the patient and how the patient's family members are doing. If any of the family members are developing symptoms then we determine what needs to be done, whether they need to be tested or any action needs to be taken for them: Meena Ganesh, CEO and Managing Director - Portea Medical
We started working in the first week of May with one of the governments and thereafter we have worked with multiple governments. A total of about 50,000+ COVID positive patients have been monitored by us, of which 45,000 have been discharged which means they are fine and back to normal life. The balance 5,000 are still being monitored. A total of 3%, in fact less maybe 2.5% patients, had to be hospitalised. All the others that is 97.5% patients have recovered from home or continued to be monitored. This is a huge benefit for the healthcare ecosystem.
The burden of moving more and more people into COVID care centres, or into hospitals, is minimised. And those that need real attention are getting attention. The healthy people are not sitting in COVID care centres or hospitals. The people who are falling sick are able to get access to hospitals and beds.
Delhi has been an amazing example, the government has really gone out of the way to help us in any way we wanted: Dr. Shuchin Bajaj: Founder Director, Ujala Cygnus Hospital
The impact I think has been massive. Everybody is speaking about the Delhi model. We are just lucky and very proud and privileged to have been a small part of it. I think we connected to hundreds and thousands of patients. If you think that RNought is anywhere between 2-3, connecting to about 90,000 patients in Delhi, I think it's more than 100,000 now, if you see the RNought is 2.5, you prevented 2.5 lakh new infections because we made sure that these people either stayed at home or went to hospital. And did not keep roaming around, did not go out, did not become super spreaders.
Raghavendra Prasad: Founder, StepOne on the work done by them in Delhi during the COVID-19 outbreak
In Delhi, Project StepOne is helping the Delhi government in the fight against COVID in terms of mobilising donors for plasma and also helping donors to be matched with the right recipients. The intervention in Delhi was enabled by the government when it set up the plasma bank in ILBS which is a Delhi govt owned hospital. And they were not able to get enough donors to come forward and donate inspite of a lot of campaigns and that is when they requested StepOne. And what we started doing was, we started having the volunteer doctors from StepOne talk to each of these donors personally and get them to come down and donate.
When someone turns positive, there are two reactions - they continue their life as if nothing happened. And the other extreme is they utterly panic and do things they shouldn't - rushing to a hospital and demanding a bed. So a call from a doctor will help subdue those reactions - those who didn't care were being counselled by the doctors. And those who panicked, they would calm their nerves and help them to think more rationally. This relationship went on until the time the positive person recovered. So there were deep bonds between the volunteer doctors and the citizens and the impact of that was immeasurable.
Dr Swapneil Parikh, Co-Author of The Coronavirus Book & Co-founder Plasma Yoddha on importance of Plasma therapy
Plasma therapy is over 100 years old. tried for various diseases and infection.. It is the part of blood and has protein called antibodies. People who have recovered from COVID-19 can donate plasma. Donating plasma is very safe. Plasma can help neutralise the virus and help the patients early on in the disease. It is a passive form of immunity which can be transferred from one person to another. There is a huge potential in studying convalescent plasma.
It is more of the fear which is gripping the society. Each person is scared of losing their lives: Dr Abdul Samad Ansari, Director, Critical Care Services, Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital in Mumbai
It is the first time that even the young and fit people are worried about case fatality. Our country has one of the lowest case fatalities. 85% of the patient who are in home quarantine are doing well. Majority of patients are doing very well.
Satyender Jain, Minister of Health, Delhi explains how Delhi brought COVID cases under control and the testing strategy being adopted by the government
The situation in Delhi is now under control, it seems. The new cases per day has decreased. It used to be more than 2,000 per day, now it is 800-1000 per day: Satyender Jain, Minister of Health, Delhi
Satyender Jain, Minister of Health, Delhi joins the #CaringForIndia telethon
Dia Mirza, Actor, Producer, UNEP Goodwill Ambassador and UN Secretary General's Advocate on #CaringForIndia Telethon
Anonymous donor donated Rs 50 lakh for Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) during #CareForIndia telethonYou too can make a contribution to protect the frontline workers fighting the pandemic. Click here to find out how to donate:
https://special.ndtv.com/caring-for-india-77/donate-now
Mask is the only vaccine presently available: Dr Ravi Wankhedkar, Former National President, Indian Medical AssociationThank you for recognising the role of healthcare givers. Healthcare workers are still in dire need of personal protective gears. Although the reproductive factor of the pandemic has improved but let us not forget that it is a patchy pandemic, the geographical area of pandemic can change. We have to keep watching and not let our guards down.
Mask are to be made compulsory. All the celebrities, opinion makers must wear proper fitting masks all the time every where. Here all NGOs can pitch in. Even the political and community leaders at local level should come on to streets and make the community aware and make people wear masks.
Priyanka Prakash, Head - Online Giving, Marketing and Partnership, GiveIndia on how they are trying help the needy foot their medical bill
When a person is ill, the whole family goes through financial stress. The aim is to help one pay the medical bills without taking loans. We make sure that all the donors get an update for all the donations that they are making. We have to see that the maximum use of funds is being done.
One of the founding philosophy of GiveIndia is trust and transparency. When we take up any fundraiser on our platform, we verify and ensure that updates are provided to donors.
Dr Rajat Jain, President, Doctors For You on Mobile Medical Units and how these are helping in screening and identifying COVID infected people
Through Mobile Medical Units till now in Mumbai alone, we are able to screen more than 16,000 population. And we know that the screening and testing is one the biggest intervention in this COVID area. And using this screening we were able to find out more than 55 patients who were having COVID positive and they were having hypoxia. And now with our intervention, they are being treated in the hospitals and we were able to save them. Otherwise, because of the hypoxia they might have worsened and we might have lost all of them.
Similarly, we conducted these screening programmes at lot of pediatric places also because we know that though in pediatric patients the disease doesn't get severe, but they act as a major source of spreading the infection to the other people. We were able to find a lot of pediatric age group COVID positive patients and they were being managed in the treatment facilities.
You can't have doctors sick..as simple as that: Atul Kasbekar, Photographer and Film Producer
Sandeep Sibal, CEO, Fourth Frontier & Board Member, Give India on #CaringForIndia Telethon:
When COVID first hit, we recognised the fact that the impact it will have on the country will be in diverse areas. We also know the impact on the migrants it was creating. We realised that healthcare needed to be supported. When we studied the response of other countries, we saw that the failure of the healthcare system can be lethal. In India also, we studied the hotspots and found the same problem. Within healthcare also, it is very important to protect the healthcare workers, our protectors. We found that there was a lack of PPEs (Personal Protection Equipment) and so we decided to focus on PPEs.
India's biggest problem is the delivery of healthcare: Dr Devi Shetty, Founder, Narayana Health
The most important way to control COVID is the responsibility of every citizen to protect themselves. Stay away from the infection, they will break the cycle of spread. They will be doing a great service to themselves and to society. And from the policy point of view, we have come to a clear picture that COVID is now moving from big cities to small towns, districts, talukas and villages. So we need to educate them and create good healthcare infrastructure.
Unfortunately in the last 20 years, government hospitals are not living up to our expectations. It is very important that the civic bodies get together and try and help public hospitals bring in more transparency, accountability and try and support them. If that happens, 600 - 700 government hospitals, district hospitals and a few thousand taluka hospitals will become vibrant. They need professional help to streamline their operation and that kind of help can come from organisations like GiveIndia. And if that happens, believe me we would have transformed the healthcare of this country.
In the time of a crisis like this pandemic, both the demand from donors surge - I mean 3.5 lakh donors have donated to the fund, as well as the number of NGOs doing work on this issue has skyrocketed. So literally 70-80% of all NGOs across India say that they are doing some work related to COVID relief: Ingrid Srinath, Director, Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy, Ashoka University
GiveIndia to cope with this surge with both supply and demand, was to create a 20 person advisory board comprising of really emminent people across business, philanthropy and civil society to oversee the whole process, define the mandate for the fund, define the fund's priorities and then continue to monitor the fund.
Within that advisory board there is a 3 person steering committee of which I am part, which meets weekly. And what we do is review proposals that have already been vetted by the GiveIndia staff to meet their criteria and then we examine them for their fit with what the funds purposes are. And then we report back to the board on this, so in a sense there is a three step vetting of every programme that receives money from the funds.
So, all disbursals are reported weekly on the ICRF website and through social media accounts of ICRF. We review it as a committee weekly and the advisory board reviews it fortnightly.
Corporates have come forward and supported these campaigns through their CSR funds. We also have individual contributions, like Sundar Pichai coming forward and giving 5 crores: Somedutta Chatterjee, Head of Corporate Partnerships, GiveIndiaIn the last 4-5 months of COVID we have started employee fund raisers with over 50 corporates and we have cumulatively raised 6 crore to support the various relief initiatives that GI launched - ranging from giving sanitation kits to vulnerable masses to giving dry rations to communities to health care initiatives as well as direct cash transfers to migrant labour.
We helped them all with direct cash transfers. We have worked with over 20 corporates like Marico, Genpact, DeutscheBank, to provide cooked meals to communities that have been hungry because of the lockdown. We have also worked with several corporates, around 40-50, to work on healthcare intiatives - setting up isolation wards, to PPE kits, face masks, shields, oxygen humidifiers to setting up facilities in quarantine zones to provising ambulances for the mobile medical units - we have worked all of that with corporates. So this is how they have come forward to support out covid response work.
When COVID India Respond Fund was put together in March, the intent was very clear- to help those who are hit the worst: Govind Iyer, Managing Partner, Egon Zehnder & Board Director, GiveIndia
The areas we have touched it livelihoods, healthcare and humanitarian efforts. Through our livelihood efforts we have been able to benefit over 5000 people. Through Humanitarian efforts we have provided cooked meals and rations to marginalized communities impacting more than 29 lakh people.
We want to thank our partners on the ground. Our thousand of volunteers.
GiveIndia has for many years now been the largest platform facilitating retail giving in the country but it's done a remarkable job during COVID in really stepping up and doing that at a multiple of what it used to do in previous years: Amit Chandra, Chairman, Bain Capital India Office
I think giving is really important from two perspectives. Firstly, it is important because without giving we cannot really build the nation that we want to see and that we aspire for. But I also think it is important because giving is about helping ourselves, It is about evolving our own personality into happier individuals and souls that we really want to be.
We spend a lot of time to build trust among our donors: Atul Satija, Founder 2.0, CEO - GiveIndia
Give India started in 2000 with people donating small amount of money from their salary. Gradually we started growing in terms of size of the donation.
Over the last few months, we have seen amazing generosity from the people. We have raised lakhs over the past four months.
Most important aspect is trust. We send our team in person on ground. They meet NGOs and see the works. Sometimes we even conduct surprise visits.
India's infection rate is showing some dip but we need to be careful: Prannoy Roy
Our doctors have been on the frontline of this pandemic and many have lost their lives: Prannoy Roy
#CaringForIndia Telethon gets underway
Coming Up: #CaringForIndiaTelethon
Watch 2-hour special #CaringForIndia telethon to raise money for healthcare workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic
To support our healthcare workers and protect them from falling ill themselves in the line of duty, the campaign has identified three areas of intervention in India's battle against coronavirus:
- Door-to-door community screening in hotspots
- Provide certified Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits and masks to save our saviours from the virus
- Scale plasma donation and facilitate safe home quarantine solutions
With 0.55 hospital beds per thousand population, and under 15 percent of ICUs across the country have dedicated critical care doctors, this campaign is to help bridge some of these gaps for better patient outcomes and to make sure our healthcare workers are safe themselves.
Our doctors, nurses and other hospital staff have been carrying the heavy burden of the pandemic while working within the limitations of an inadequate public healthcare system.