Gyanaranjan Parida works in a MNC and is one of the Volunteers at India Cares.
'India cares' is an initiative where people from across the country, coordinated with each other to help large number of people who were suffering during the pandemic.
In an interaction with him he told how he worked with India Cares."First wave in India was brimming with ration and dry food requests, we used to get help from DM and Tehsildars to make this possible, we also connected with few NGOs", he said.
He says that second wave was a completely different and more treacherous."Requirements changed in the second wave, people were wandering around to find hospital beds, oxygen cylinder and medicines."
He has been helping people with online doctor consultation for people who were home isolated or couldn't travel for the consultation. "We had made a doctor and a patient group on whatsapp, there were 60 doctors added to the group who used to look up to the cases. There are people who used to keep the check of 'India Cares' dms on Twitter and circulated the information in the group. Our responsibility was to talk to patients and find out what was there problem and alot the doctor according to the urgency"
He said it became extremely difficult to convince some people to go for physical consultations as infection started spreading."To talk to them and convince them politely was a challenge for us", he said.
An incident he shared which was quite touching for him, " I got a call from UP from a guy whose mother was in the hospital and her health was still deteriorating, he told me that there was no proper medical care in the hospital and attendants had to take care of their family members. It was a different case but i tried to help him with doctor and he guided him with the treatment and medicines, eventually she recovered. He called me to express his gratitude and it was a great feeling for me"
Gyanaranjan says that it was a lifetime experience for him to work with India Cares.