HELP MEDICAL PERSONNEL SAVE LIVES - Providing public hospitals and systems the equipment to fight COVID-19

The impact of COVID can be broadly divided into two distinct stages: the immediate healthcare component and the longer-term livelihoods component. While the ripple effects of the 21-day lockdown will be felt for years, the need of the hour is medical, on the frontlines, for healthcare workers. In this context, hospitals have to be adequately equipped to fight the infection. We need to help the troops fight the virus by providing them with adequate infrastructure and equipment to save not just patients, but also themselves.Doctors who have outpatient clinics are shutting them down for unavailability of enough masks, instead referring them to the nearest large public hospital. This places an enormous strain on larger public hospitals which are already buckling under the enormous pressure of the pandemic. We are hearing of families of nurses, doctors, and hospital sanitation workers worried about their loved one going in to work, for fear that there isn’t enough protection. And the fears are not entirely unfounded: In an alarming development, two hospitals in Mumbai were declared containment zones and shut, after several nurses and doctors developed symptoms of COVID-19. It is in this context that we seek help in our work to strengthen hospitals and their infrastructure during this unprecedented healthcare crisis.

The overall objective is to work towards lowering deaths of pregnant mothers and adults due to COVID-19 outbreak in the program area by providing medical equipment/consumables to the ICU wards of Government Hospitals across Tamilnadu.

The project will help doctors, nurses, and other medical and paramedical staff fight this pandemic in a safe manner, thereby saving several thousand lives. The project will help in Ekam’s vision of an effective public healthcare delivery system by

a) strengthening existing systems and

b) Helping create confidence within rural communities in the efficacy of the public healthcare system, one of the major stumbling blocks in the delivery of healthcare.

It will also help Ekam build positive relationships with public hospitals and their staff, a critical factor in our work of bringing together public healthcare and communities.