Covid-19 Relief Response
Covid screening and community testing camps
To help address the fear of testing and being hospitalised, Anahat collaborated with the government to run community testing camps to make testing easily accessible. Over 9 months during the Covid-19 pandemic, we were able to provide easy access to testing services for 2,71,000 people in Bangalore.
Anahat staff at testing sites in Bangalore
Covid vaccination camps
When the Covid vaccine drive began in India in January 2021, many people particularly from lower income communities were hesitant to get vaccinated because of misinformation being spread on social media and Whatsapp. By May 2021, the second wave in India was at its peak, hospitalisations and deaths were at record highs and people started rushing to get vaccinated. Government clinics were short of vaccine
supply and were turning people away. In response, Anahat conducted 6 vaccination camps through which 3000 people were vaccinated. In the days leading up to the camp, we did door to door campaigning to spread the word. We also partnered with a private hospital which provided the medical team and data entry staff for registration on the government portal.
Health camps
When and where possible, we conducted community medical camps to provide treatment and medicines to underserved communities, as general health services were not easily available during the pandemic. Despite lockdowns, we conducted 20 health camps, reaching 1500 patients, most of whom were able to refill their prescriptions for diabetes and hypertension medications.
Telemedicine
When the pandemic struck in March 2020, we had to quickly pivot to telehealth consultations since all health services including clinics, diagnostic centres, medical stores had to shut down. We used WhatsApp video calls for the clinical consult, prescribed medication based on the consult and the most recent diagnostic report that the patient had. We did this for 9 months from March to December in 2020, during which time we were able to reach 1,000 patients and send medicines to 500 people.
Medicine packets being delivered to patients during the Covid-19 lockdown.