PROVIDE LIFE SUPPORT TO COVID-19 PATIENTS

The second wave of COVID-19 has engulfed India completely. As the second wave is getting deeper we are experiencing the world’s highest number of COVID cases and deaths per day. These unnerving numbers of COVID patients are overwhelming our healthcare system. With more than 2,01,187 deaths and a total 17,997,267 COVID cases by April 28, 2021, this second wave requires an immediate response. 

ActionAid Association has been working tirelessly across India ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.  In the year 2020, ActionAid Association was able to support 7.8 million COVID-impacted people with food, ration and hygiene kits.

In this second wave of spread at a very fast speed, ActionAid Association’s volunteers, partners, and team (500+, and growing) across India are actively serving in various forms to support the affected people. From building health camps in urban localities to distributing essentials, supporting facilitating centers for returnee migrants and helping the neediest families during this tough time, are some things we are doing on a continuous basis.

ActionAid Association Response 2021

To combat this second wave of COVID-19, ActionAid Association has planned various services and resources to help the needy and people in distress. 

Health Camps

Health camps will be organised in urban localities where people live in cramped habitations, and the possibility of getting infection increases manifold.  Trained volunteers will track and identify people who need quarantine support and link them with quarantine centres if home isolation is impossible. 

We need an amount of Rs. 150000/- to run a health camp in one city for 4 months.

Vaccination Awareness And Support

Due to fear, unawareness and logistic challenges, marginalised communities are either reluctant to go for COVID-19 vaccination or do not consider this as a necessary protection measure to save themselves from the pandemic, which is worsening day by day in India. The lack of engagement with people from the lower socio-economic background is not helping the already slow spread of vaccination. Motivating people for vaccination and increasing people’s access to vaccines is the need of the hour.

While there is vaccine hesitancy, many people are also not going for vaccination due to logistics challenges. For many of the families living in remote/interior locations (e.g. tribals, PVTGs, NT/DNT communities, Musahars etc) it takes Rs.200-300 to reach the nearest health centre for vaccination.

How We Are Going To Help

ActionAid Association will facilitate awareness drives to help address vaccine hesitancy and make vaccines available and accessible. Awareness drives will be organised in both urban and rural areas. 

• Support will be provided for registration for vaccination on CoWIN App and Aarogya Setu App for vaccination. 

• Engagement with District-level authorities including Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and urban dispensaries, will also be done for the vaccination drive.

• Cost of transport, vaccination, co-morbidity test report will be bear according to the availability of vaccine in a particular region.

Safety Kits For Sanitation Workers

Safety kits are essential to several people engaged in sanitation work at different locations – hospitals, market places, residential colonies, burial ground etc. who are severely prone to infections. With the surge in the number of infections and deaths, these workers are working round the clock. There is a continuous need to replenish protective gear for them. Safety kits comprise a set of masks, gloves, boots, soap and sanitiser bottles.

We can procure safety kits at a cost of Rs.700 per worker.

Facilitaion Centres For The Returnee Migrants

With the workers returning to home towns/villages, there is a need to reactivate migrant facilitation centres and temporary medical camps at district, block and Panchayat level to provide support and relevant information to the returnee families. Services provided at facilitation centres will include the following:

• Some of the returnee members who have COVID symptoms will need quarantine /isolation support. ActionAid Association will work closely with the local administration/panchayat to provide the quarantine facilities.

• These facilities will have provisions to cater to the needs of the elderly, disabled, children and women, such as clean toilets, sanitary napkins, safe drinking water, antenatal care etc. Adequate safety and protection mechanisms will also be provided as needed.

• Information on COVID Hospitals, beds, ICU beds, ambulances, test facilities, oxygen cylinders, medicines in real-time, etc., will be provided through these centres so that workers can reach for health support facilities and not fall prey to black marketing.

• Support will need to be provided to the families in the form of sanitation material – masks, towels, soaps, detergent, sanitiser etc.

• The centres will also provide psychosocial counselling support to the workers.

• Efforts will be made to ensure that the home-coming migrants face no stigma. Special awareness drives at the Panchayat level will be undertaken with the help of our local groups and volunteers to help check stigmatisation.

• State Governments have also announced job opportunities to migrant workers who are returning from different states. Ensuring access will require helping workers to register for such programmes and apply for the same. Similarly, ActionAid Association will support migrant and informal workers to link with various social security provisions and other protection schemes being declared by governments in the context of the current COVID emergency.

Dry Ration And Sanitation Support To Most Vulnerable Families

Curfews and lockdowns to contain infection drastically impact the wages and livelihood of people in the informal economy, particularly the daily wages workers. Daily Wage workers are losing their work/ jobs due to lockdown like situation & families are once again prone to suffering and near starvation. Workers fear that the job loss and hunger will worsen as the COVID-19 cases are much worse. Migrant workers are primarily in pathetic condition, with many of them yet to overcome the impact of economic hardships they suffered due to the impact of the national lockdown on their livelihoods last year when now they find themselves once again under a similar situation.

Dry ration support will go a long way in supporting them with the immediate effect of loss of work and income caused by partial/full lockdowns.

Dry rations and sanitation can be procured for Rs.1500 per family.

Direct Cash Transfers

Apart from the ration support, there are many other requirements to be fulfilled by families under such difficult circumstances. Requirements include specific needs to vulnerable populations in the families, such as the sick, the elderly, children, pregnant women etc., many families are incurring costs for their return journeys. Similarly, it will take some time for them to find work to sustain their living. Direct cash transfer to some such most needy families will help then tide over the immediate survival needs. Cash can also help families to meet the cost of medicines in case of health emergencies.

An amount of Rs. 6000 per family is planned.

Help Desks At Cities (in Planning Stage)

We plan to set up help desks at the worst affected cities of India to provide COVID relevant information and link the needy workers with health services such as vaccination, covid treatment facilities, ambulance services, etc. 

These help desks can also be set up at railway stations, bus stands and check gates. 

With the fear and anxieties due to the partial/complete lockdown, there is chaos at bus terminals and railway stations across cities. Therefore, setting help desks at these sites in destination cities are essential to provide information to the families wanting to go back. 

-The Help Desks Will Provide

• Information to travellers.

• Direct supports such as food, emergency medicines, sanitation kits etc.

• Water, medicines, nutrition supplements, food etc. to vulnerable people(the elderly, children and sick people)

• Awareness and sensitisation will also be carried on COVID appropriate

• Behaviour, wearing masks, maintaining social distance and proper hygiene etc.

• The help desk will be able to provide support to workers in multiple languages as per needs.

Coverage

ActionAid Association will reach out to migrant and informal workers in Maharashtra, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Appeal

Our people need help to tackle this devastating situation. With your donations and support, ActionAid will continue serving lakhs of people in urgent need across India.

A range of interventions are needed from healthcare, ration and other supplies, information and to financial support at various levels. Every donation of yours means a lot to people in need, and will strengthen our work.

You can also volunteer with ActionAid Association in this grand effort to help us stand together against COVID.

How Your One Small Step Can Save Many Lives 

•    Share this fundraiser page with your friends and relatives.

•    Start a fundraiser.

•    Introduce us to organizations and trusts who can help us.

•    Create awareness on our initiative.

•   Donate in your own capacity to help ActionAid provide immediate support to the neediest.

Your donation of  - 

• Rs 10,000 builds up the fund to set up facilitation centers for returnee migrants.

• Rs 6000 helps in direct cash transfer to the families whose livelihood is affected.

• Rs 2500 provides ration kits to the COVID affected families.

• Rs 1500 supports in purchasing medicines (based on doctor’s prescriptions)