If you really intend to help people hit by Covid-19, you can do more than forwarding random forwards to them or their family members. Though following Covid-Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) like maintaining social distancing imposes limitations on helping personally those hit by the Coronavirus, yet one can support them from a safe distance and also digitally by sharing personally verified information.
Those who have had to go to a hospital or a cremation ground with their loved ones in India realise after wasting some time the opportunity cost of chasing unverified forwards. At the least, such forwards can be a waste of time and effort. At the worst, chasing these random forwards can cost a life. Of course, there are exceptions.
Forwards give desperately needy person hope, who give up the job at hand to chase a phone number switched off or busy most of the time. After some time, they give up chasing the first forwarded number, start chasing another forward and keep on trying till they get lucky, which is rare, and compete with other lucky people for limited resources. This can be a vicious cycle taking up precious time and effort.
Understandably, all of us want to help the needy, but exercising informed discretion is as important as an extension of help. Most of the people suspected to be struck with Covid out there can do with some help, which they need rather than what we want to give them.
What do most people need usually? They need real help or authentic information to look for necessary help. Most people with unusual health conditions have queries like: Do I have Covid-19? What should I do? How to do it? And so on.
Instead of becoming a self-educated physician counselling the affected, it would be useful to find out and share the phone number of a doctor accessible on phone. Apart from paid services, there are free helplines also. Please call up the phone numbers to confirm if these are functional, or source helpful numbers from a verified source who has used them. Don’t take at face value forwards self-proclaiming that these are verified contacts.
After a physician has confirmed a Covid-19 infection, some medicines may not be available in the local market. Online pharmacies are taking longer than usual to deliver medicines these days. Time is important. Here any helpful information from the neighbourhood Covid patient’s family would be useful. More than 90% of the patients if treated correctly on time can recover at home.
If a doctor recommends hospitalisation, the requirement of authentic information is very important given that hospital beds are scarce and common people have to compete with the well-connected and the rich. Correct and real-time information about the availability of a hospital bed can be crucial in putting the patient on the road to recovery.
Common people can’t pre-book hospital beds like an Oye room on the phone or online. Those wanting to help have to find out from their sources if someone has found a bed somewhere, real-time availability and share it with the family members of the patient. There are some Apps also that share the real-time availability of beds, but it is still useful to reconfirm if possible.
The timely availability of an ambulance can be as scarce as getting a hospital bed. Reaching the patient to the hospital in a timely manner is the best one can do at this stage. Then the wait for the bed begins. For those whose condition deteriorates, the competition to secure an ICU bed is very tough and can be the difference between life and death.
The lucky ones getting ICU beds may also have to struggle to get oxygen beds or treatment like plasma therapy, which is not provided at most hospitals. If it is an option, extend support by looking for a couple of donors who have been treated for Covid recently.
Besides, an ICU patient may need lifesaving injections, which are scarce. If you are able to get any leads, there are chances that the injection on offer may be fake. So, it is safer to find out someone who has procured it from somewhere and used it to good effect.
Those who don’t survive hospitals have to again wait for delivery from this world. They have to wait for a place in the mortuary followed by a waiting period for their turn at the cremation ground. When they are allocated a time slot at the cremation ground, they have to wait for the hearse. Finding out in advance about the availability of a cremation ground and a hearse would be very helpful.
At the cremation ground, one has to make one’s way through scattered bodies of near and dear ones of a sea of people. The cremation procedure demands deployment of PPE-clad relatives and friends, who can find a vacant platform, cart firewood from far ends of the ground, and finally wait along with the other bereaved in the open in the summer heat for the cremation ground to be filled up with funeral pyres before a pandit helps light these sequentially. The time taken at any point depends upon the number of pyres, which can run into hundreds, depending upon the size of the ground.
The worldly troubles of the dead don’t go up in smoke as yet. As the pyres are lit, one can help the bereaved by queuing up for payment of the firewood used and getting a receipt, which serves as an important document for procuring a death certificate later. Though it is difficult to follow CAB at the cremation ground, yet one is obliged to try to do it.
Going by the reports, the current wave of the Coved pandemic is far from being over. It would be useful to set up smaller WhatsApp groups of doers from close family members, friends and neigbhourhood to keep all the basic information ready for an emergency. Let information poverty not be a reason for casualty or more trauma.
Source: The Times of India
Published on 3 May 2021