SEEDS CONTINUES TO HELP THOSE LEFT UNDER THE RADAR THROUGH COVID-19 CRISIS IN INDIA

15 May 2021: SEEDS, a leading humanitarian organisation in India, steps up to Share The Burden on the health care system during the surge in Covid-19 cases in India. The organisation is working round the clock to augment critical supplies to Government Covid Hospitals; help step up the vaccination drive; establish Covid Care Centres; and extend support services with the setup of a national helpline to facilitate access to critical medical services.
 
Winner of the Subhash Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar 2021, SEEDS’ work has been focussed on the most marginalised communities often left unseen during disaster response. Currently, through a robust workforce deployed on the ground, it is committed to procuring and disbursing over 1000 oxygen concentrators, 2000 Pulse oximeters, 20 oxygen generators, 6000 face masks (PPE), 5000 PPE Kits, 300 beds, 2000 patient care blankets, and other critical care equipment to Covid care hospitals in Delhi NCR (Gurugram, Noida) and Uttarakhand to begin with.  
 
True to its spirit, SEEDS is also running a 24x7 national helpline, ‘Covid Frontline’, to link individuals with verified leads on specific services like oxygen, hospital beds, medicines, counselling on stress and anxiety issues, Covid home care and doctor consultations. The initiative is designed to help those who often fall under the radar, and do not have access to the kind of crowdsourcing happening on social media. 
 
“In less than 20 minutes my call to the SEEDS helpline was addressed and my cousin’s father in law found an ICU bed that eventually saved his life”, said an emotional caller from Delhi who had called on the SEEDS helpline in an hour of desperation.
 
SEEDS Co-Founder, Dr Manu Gupta said, “We are humbled by the response we are getting to our helpline. In these testing times, each life we are able to save is a token of our service to humanity and that is our focus right now. We at SEEDS are committed to sharing the burden on our health care system in every possible way we can.”
 
Moreover, SEEDS is working with state governments in setting up 10 well-equipped covid care centres/isolation centres as a decentralised solution in Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Howrah, Hyderabad, Mathura, Mumbai, Pune and Sangrur, collectively for the most marginalised communities. Each care centre will have a minimum of 20 beds and will be attached to a Government hospital in the vicinity. All care centres will follow guidelines of the state government and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW). In addition to the ongoing vaccination drive in East Delhi, SEEDS has further initiated its vaccination drive to reach out to over 1,00,000 individuals in Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana, in the first phase. The vaccination drive will be continued for next 6 months across India, where SEEDS’ team and volunteers are going door-to-door, helping people register for the vaccines, generating awareness on pre and post health requirements and the schedule for vaccination.  

If people are not able to register, SEEDS team members are helping them explain and assist with the step-by-step process and register. They continuously follow up with the individuals on which hospital they have to access and when. The team members are fully equipped and well updated on their next vaccination date These initiatives build on SEEDS’ response to Covid-19 in 2020. That largely focussed on supporting the most marginalised communities who comprise the bottom 1% of the population with dry ration, hygiene supply and PPE kits across 13 states in India. This included children in orphanages, transgender communities, daily wage earners, women-headed households, commercial sex workers, people with disability, and tribal families. The efforts reached 4.7 lakh people, providing over 9.4 million meals, 24,000 hygiene kits and 11,500 PPE kits across Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. 

About SEEDS:

SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society) is a not-for-profit organisation that enables community resilience through practical solutions in the areas of disaster readiness, response and rehabilitation. Since 1994, the organisation has worked extensively on every major disaster in the Indian subcontinent – grafting innovative technology on to traditional wisdom. It has reached out to families affected by disasters and climate stresses; strengthened and rebuilt schools and homes; and has invariably put its faith in skill-building, planning and communications to foster long-term resilience. SEEDS is also India’s first agency to be verified on the parameters of the global Core Humanitarian Standards (CHS) – an international certification system for quality and accountability in humanitarian response. SEEDS has been awarded with the most prestigious annual Subhash Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan 2021 by the Government of India acknowledging the invaluable contribution and selfless service rendered by individuals and organisations in India in the field of Disaster Management. SEEDS completed 27 years of outstanding service to humanity in January 2021 and is re-anchoring its approach to building resilience through innovation. It continues to empower the most vulnerable across Asia to build a better future. 

For more information, visit www.seedsindia.org 

*This story is published by VOH team*