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Lucknow: A man, looking for a plasma donor for his 63-year-old father in Noida, took to social media to post an SOS message. Within no time, he got a list of verified plasma donors, thanks to a group of strangers who have helped more than 300 people desperately looking for oxygen cylinders, hospital beds, plasma and medicines.
“Saving lives is the need of the hour. Apart from sharing initial leads, we also ask patients to remain in touch with us till they get help,” said 33-year-old Shobhit Tandon, a financial consultant from Kanpur.
The team, constituted by a management faculty in Lucknow, gets requisitions on Whatsapp groups following which the team uses social media to seek information.
The group comprising students and professionals keeps helping callers on testing, treatment, hospitalization and oxygen support facilities, besides providing counselling to them. “We provide verified leads to attendants. Our inboxes are flooded with messages offering leads. There are people who offer assistance immediately. Such is the power of humanity in times of crisis,” said Reena Agarwal, 49, the woman behind the initiative.
Agarwal, who heads the social responsibility committee in a management institute, contacted her students and alumni of last 10 years, now working in different sectors across the country. “We have three WhatsApp groups where over 600 volunteers are connected. It’s heartwarming to see people responding in record time. The USP of our team is that we are working in shifts round-the-clock,” Agarwal told TOI.
In a recent case, the team used social media to help a patient from Tirupati get a bed. “We got the message that a person needs a bed in Tirupati. When we searched, we found that no bed was vacant. Within an hour, we arranged for a bed in a hospital in an adjoining district roughly two hours away from Tirupati. We even arranged an ambulance for him, and everything was done online,” Shobhit said.
“The entire movement is by the people and for the people. The second wave of pandemic has left us so helpless that we decided to do our bit. Every time we save a life, we feel happy and motivated,” said 30-year-old Aditi Rana, a first year management student.
For Ankur Bhatia (31), a bank employee in Kanpur, the movement has instilled hope in people. “When we came together, we found that lack of information was the biggest hurdle in fight against Covid. We work on providing leads and help people,” Ankur said.
In the last two weeks, the team has helped over 100 patients with hospital beds in Lucknow, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Jaipur, Patna, Dehradun, Varanasi and Prayagraj.
The group has helped more than 125 patients in various cities of the country with medicines and injections. They have arranged plasma for at least 40 patients and provided oxygen cylinders, cans and concentrators to 120 people. The group is also arranging RT-PCR tests and ambulance for patients.
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