Calcutta Rescue Community Health Workers (CHWs) are hard at work in the slums where they live identifying people showing symptoms of Covid-19.
Debu, who heads Calcutta Rescue’s street medicine team, said, “Slum dwellers often don’t take care of symptoms like fever, headache and cough. Most of them ignore it as a common cold that will go away with time. But Covid-19 shares the same symptoms and it can become fatal.”
In the current situation, many slum dwellers are also hiding their symptoms. “They are afraid of being alone and stigmatised in the slum community,” explained Debu. “That is why we needed our CHWs who can convince them not to stay quiet.”
Every day the CHWs move through their respective slums, checking up on the patients and convincing slum dwellers to get tested if they have Covid-like symptoms. They are armed with thermal guns and pulse oximeters. They keep checking the patients and relay the info to the Calcutta Rescue medical team.
“We tell the Community health workers not to ask directly because that might scare them and make them hide it, but to find out indirectly if they have any health complaints,” said Alakananda Ghosh, Deputy CEO and head of the NGO’s medical department, “If they are Covid positive, we monitor their health continuously and provide medicines when needed.”
The CHWs have so far identified eight households in four slums who had developed Covid. Almost all of them had mild or no symptoms, and were advised to isolate themselves in their homes as much as possible. One had to be admitted to hospital suffering from shortness of breath or but they are now much better.
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