HOW YOU CAN HELP YOURSELF & OTHERS DURING THE PANDEMIC.

 This post is a little off course my usual writing topic but, it is relevant. We are all well aware of the conditions of our society for the past 2 months, maybe not for other countries but at least it is the case for India. The number of positive Covid-19 cases has tremendously increased. 

An organization named Swecha had taken the initiative to start a helpline for everyone in need and to get the care they deserve. 

Now, you might want to know about Swecha. Swecha is a learning centre that offers MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) for free software and free science. It aims to provide knowledge related to tools, technologies, concepts related to Engineering, and free software.

Let's move on to the initiative taken by Swecha. The Forum's of peoples health was the first people's helpline that had started at the time of Covid-19 first wave and served more than 40000 calls. Its initial motive was to cater to the needs of patients (they stated) who couldn't access the resources and consult hospitals because of the immediate lockdown. Now during the second wave, they have added the locations of Covid testing centres, vaccination centres, a directory of all the resources, and useful information. They also stated their "Ultimate dream" is to ensure that everyone is safe and healthy, get medical assistance when in need and know true medical facts instead of fake rumours spread around.

Click here to be redirected to the website.

Here is how the website looks like.

I was introduced to them through my college, the Forum's of peoples health started a hackathon in which individuals and organizations volunteer to find resources and helpful leads. These leads will be verified by another set of volunteers and then uploaded to the website for public use. The resources show the availability of Plasma donors and banks, Oxygen cylinders, Remdesivir drug, blood donors, and also hospital beds.

This hackathon is a way to add more information into a commonplace, putting all the resources in a commonplace will give more visibility and will be easier to reach out to maximum people. If you wish, you could also contribute to society in such difficult times through the Forum of peoples health. Information and directions are given on the website.