It’s very easy to blame the government for everything. The difficult part is to find a solution within the system. Sometimes even out-of-the-box thinking is needed to prevail upon difficult situations. The Additional Collector of Mandsaur District in Western Madhya Pradesh rose to the occasion when people across India were gasping for oxygen.
During the peak of the second wave of Covid-19, there was a crunch of oxygen supply everywhere in the country due to an unprecedented and abrupt rise in demand. The situation was even worse in remote and rural areas.
The havoc all around brought together three alumni of IIT-Delhi, who collectively helped in the treatment of Covid patients in rural areas. One of them, IAS officer Rishav Gupta, the Additional Collector of Mandsaur, along with two of his fellow alumni of IIT-Delhi, managed to tide over the crisis on their own.
During second-wave mobilization of oxygen central lines along with continuous refilling of oxygen cylinders were not practically feasible in peripheral hospitals like Primary Health Centers and Community Health Centers. Therefore, the usage of Oxygen Concentrators was the only practical solution to meet the rising demand in remote areas.
CROWDSOURCING FOR OXYGEN CONCENTRATORS
Mr. Gupta told Indian Masterminds, “Some members in our college alumni WhatsApp group decided to donate a few concentrators for Mandsaur district. But looking at the scale of the problem, a consensus emerged that we should take help of online crowdsourcing technique to solve this gap of resources for a small district like Mandsaur.”
Two of his friends, Kunal Mahajan and Shashank Yaduvanshi led the initiative of launching a crowdsourcing initiative on Milaap Foundation Platform, starting with the target of 50 Concentrators, they decided to raise Rs 47,50,000/- as their ultimate goal.
While both of them took care of supply chain issues with Concentrator suppliers, several other friends of Mr. Gupta took the help of digital marketing to popularize the campaign and provide authenticity to it. Help and donations started pouring in fast and quick. Facebook and Twitter became the vehicles of campaign promotion and with the help of 625 supporters, they were able to raise Rs 49,15,859/- within a week of the start of the campaign!
“With the help of these funds, we were able to buy 54 concentrators and provide them to peripheral areas of the district during the peak of 2nd wave of Covid-19 that proved to be a big source of relief as they were running 24×7 and uncountable lives were saved because of these valuable machines,” the 2014 batch officer told Indian Masterminds.
SPECIAL INITIATIVES
The administration of Mandsaur district established 24×7 District and Block Control Rooms that took care of several activities including,
- Managing Home Isolation of positive patients through tele-medicine and up-shifting of serious patients while down-shifting of recovered patients to maintain beds at all levels of medical care
- Ensuring Home Quarantine of suspected patients with the help of Corona Supervisors (local teachers, Anganwadi workers) so that the spread of disease could be controlled
- Accurate Contact Tracing of positive patients and ensuring the home quarantine of first contacts
- Data Analysis of cases (geographical distribution, age groups, gender groups, comorbidities etc.)
- Conveying real time information regarding bed availability, nearest sampling centers, ICMR Protocols and oxygen availability
Furthermore, he established five Oxygen Plants with the help of MLA-LAD Funds across the district to ensure that the district is self-sufficient in Oxygen Supply in upcoming times.
THE ACCOLADES
For his commendable work and quick action to protect the rural from the pangs of Covid19, Mr. Gupta received the Outstanding Corona Warrior Award by Jan Parishad Mandsaur District Unit. The award was presented by local MP Sudhir Gupta, MLA Yashpal Singh Sisodia, MLA Devi Lal Dhakad, Collector Manoj Pushp, and Superintendent of Police Siddharth Choudhary.
