IIIT-Hyderabad alumni chip in for oxygen, hospital beds to Covid patients
Hyderabad: An alumni of International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, with the help of volunteers has set up a war room and helped 1,000 persons during the Covid-19 second wave.
The team has addressed and resolved 1,107 requests and processed over Rs 40 lakh in financial aid, and counting. The Covid-19 war room is the brainchild of IIITH alumni Sriharsha Karamchati, who started this initiative through crowd-sourcing data and finances, including helping with hospital beds, oxygen, medicines or blood.
The volunteers verified information in the data bank managed by the backend team of IIITH alumni and scholars Mohit Jain and Sudhir Yarram, checked availability and relayed it to the attendants of patients.
“My intent was to save just one life,” Karamchati said. “Our basic purpose has been to take the mental load off the patient’s attendant while we provide remote assistance and hand-holding till the problem is resolved”, he added.
Another IIITH alumnus Anupriya Inumella who put together the call centre to process requests said that they used used a 'Ziffy' platform to set up the helpline.
Social media platforms and WhatsApp groups were set up to address pleas for plasma, medicines, oxygen and ventilator beds. “The war room has a team of doctors for remote consultation, a pharmacy college students team, hospital owners as well as IAS and IPS officers who are our final line of defence, when all else fails,” said Apoorva Srivastava, a 2nd year IIIT-H student.
A team of the alumni of the institute, spread across the country and even working remotely from other countries have set up a call centre in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities and villages including Ajmer, Bhopal, Delhi, Rajasthan, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and districts in the Telugu states.
“We had 2,000 requests of which 1,700 have been processed with a 60 per cent success rate”, said Anupriya. “At any given time, at least 100 of the 500-strong volunteer team is online.”
The Covid war room is available on 6304296587, https://www.instagram.com/sriharshakaramchati/ or https://twitter.com/HarshaKaramchati.
