‘Covid Sewa Kendra- By the Residents, For the Residents’- A Ray of Hope

The number of Covid cases are increasing alarmingly after the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic in the country. Our healthcare system is doing its best to tackle this untoward situation, but it needs support of all the citizens of our country to manage the situation. No one wants to face a situation when a serious Covid patient suffers a dip in oxygen saturation, but he or she is not able to find a hospital bed timely. In such a situation, the residents of Suncity Parikrama Society located at Sector 20, Panchkula, Haryana have decided to team up and manage this crisis collectively. They have created their own Covid Care facility in Club House area, ‘Covid Sewa Kendra- By the Residents, For the Residents’.

This ‘Covid Sewa Kendra’ will provide isolation beds, Oxygen supply from concentrators and cylinders, basic medicines, blood investigations, nursing care, tele consultation from specialist doctors and food supplies. This facility is actually not a hospital, but L1 covid care centre which will take care of very mild and mild covid related illness. It will also provide first aid or make-shift arrangement for moderate to severe covid disease till the patient gets admission in a big government or private hospital.

Dr. Anupam Goel, Consultant Laparoscopic Surgeon at Max Hospital, Mohali had this idea of creating the society’s own Covid care facility, after he received many calls daily from the patients to arrange hospital beds. The backbone of creating such a facility is voluntary involvement of residents, monetary donations, required permissions and arranging the infrastructure.

Dr. Goel says that the benefit of having its own covid care facility within the society is the isolation facility, which helps to prevent spread of covid infection from one person to other family members or other residents of the same tower. Secondly, any resident of the society can go to this facility in emergency and can get first aid required like oxygen, injectable treatment and nursing care with a great sense of security.

Creating such facilities by the community will decrease load on hospitals, which will make healthcare structure more efficient as very mild or mild cases are managed at society level only. Sh. Udit Mittal, resident of Suncity Parikrama says “every society or sector should plan their own covid care centre in their club house or community centre. A society should work collectively to save their own residents”. Sh. Anuj Aggarwal, another resident of Suncity Parikrama, feels that “closed club houses should be wisely used in covid care till this epidemic goes away. This is the least we could contribute to our society in this covid crisis”. Hence, this Covid Seva Kendra has become a ray of hope for the residents of the Society.