­Hyderabad: Help, solace a call away for the needy

Hyderabad: With Covid positive cases increasing day by day, and due to non-availability of beds in the hospitals, Covid patients with mild symptoms are being asked to be in the home isolation. These patients go through a state of anxiety, fear and negativity as there are no experts to answer their health related queries. To provide confidence and allay their fears, Hyderabad United Medicos (HUM) has launched a helpline number to address the queries 0f those in home isolation. Through this helpline number, the organization has helped and supported more than 2000 patients in the past three months.

Irfan Khan, project in-charge of HUM, said, "The helpline number 7306600600 for home isolation patients was started three months back. As covid cases have increased in the city many patients could not be admitted in the hospital due to the non-availability of the beds and some patients did not have the financial resources for treatment. So we launched this free helpline service in collaboration with Safa Baitul Maal, Access foundation and Students Islamic organization to guide the patients with proper information in adhering to home isolation guidelines. Especially during peak months of June and July we received around 100 to 150 calls daily, now as there is a lot of awareness among the people. At present we are receiving around 25-50 calls in a day. Once the people call us in our helpline number we register them and within 3 hours the doctor connects to them and if it is an emergency than within 30 minutes, the doctors would prescribe medicines through a message in the patient's phone.

Along with this, we are also distributing medical kits that include oxymeter, thermometer, masks, antibiotic and multi-vitamin tablets, till today more than 100 kits were distributed. Apart from this, we have launched a free ambulance service and around 13 ambulances are providing free transportation for patients for a government hospital. People in need can call in this helpline number 7569600800 for ambulance service. In this mission, there are around 50 volunteers supporting us in this endeavour. Out of the 50, 25 are d0ctors associated with this mission. Every day the health assistance is regularly monitoring the patients by calling them. Also, the volunteers are given training on how to handle and support the patients.The helpline number is available from 6 am to 12 am.

Dr Hafsa, vice president of Access foundation and a volunteer of HUM, said, "Here we are trying to motivate and help the home isolation patients on how to deal with it. What medication to be taken and if there is an emergency, we direct them to where beds are available."