Good Samaritans help villages fight coronavirus

Surat: Employees of the Community Health Centre (CHC) in Limzar village of Navsari were forced to daily travel over 80 kms to get two oxygen cylinders refilled at the city and then return back to look after the Covid patients.
The Limzar CHC wasn’t the only facility that depended on this daily travel for getting its quota of oxygen, medicines and other medical necessities.
This was the story of almost every CHC in other villages of south Gujarat. But things changed after the support provided by city-based NGO Prayas Team Environment (PTE). The NGO provided many villages with multiple cylinders along with medicines and medical accessories.
PTE is just one of the many city-based NGOs and welfare groups that came to the help of village population who were facing difficult situations in the current pandemic. Now, the situation is improving in the rural areas but timely help from these groups saved many lives.
These groups of young professionals have extensively worked during the second wave in the city and utilised their experience in villages. The patients requiring basic isolation facilities were quarantined at the CHCs.
“Limzar has a population of around 4,000 but its CHC caters to many surrounding villages. Till now over 300 patients have been treated here,” said Darshan Desai, a volunteer of PTE.
Similarly, a group of youths from the city travelled 422 km to Shedubhar in Amreli district to set-up an isolation centre in a village which has a population of 9,000. “The situation was worsening in the rural areas of Saurashtra hence we planned to develop an isolation centre to support the villagers. We set up a 20-bed isolation centre with 25 oxygen cylinders,” said Jatin Asodariya, a trustee in Ramkrupa Charitable Trust. The trust also runs health services in the Diamond City as well.
An IT businessman Ganpath Dhameliya joined hands with his friends Dr Gautam Sihora and Kapil Lathiya in setting up an isolation centre at Gheti village in Bhavnagar. “We set up a 40-bed isolation centre and arranged oxygen cylinders from Alang,” said Dhameliya.