By Anuksha Dey
Step One, a volunteer-led telemedical foundation in Karnataka, is reaching out to Covid patients across 18 states and union territories. The organisation consists of volunteers from all walks of life: doctors, nurses, medical students, counsellors and tele warriors, marketing and tech professionals. They are all donating their time to make a difference during these pandemic times. And so can you. Just sign up to be a volunteer with Step One by filling up the application form on projectstepone.org.
How Project Step One started
The initiative was started by Rajavendra Prasad, who helped co-found Quickill (now Practo). Prasad teamed with a group of entrepreneurs who realised India was at the brink of a lockdown to brainstorm ways in which they could help the government. In April 2020, Step One was a helpline number giving information on pre-Covid symptoms. Today, the initiative has turned into India’s largest network of medical professionals, receiving over 30,000 daily calls and providing services, such as home isolation monitoring, medical support, hospital bed allocation, and plasma donor and recipient management.
How it works
In Bengaluru, the organisation has a tie-up with BBMP, and monitors patients in home isolation. A daily automated call is sent to the patients to track their symptoms during the quarantine period. Step one has a group of trained screeners who decide if medical assistance is required, and this decision is based on the severity of the symptoms. The patients are then connected to the doctors who provide medical advice over the call. If the doctors recommend hospitalisation during any point of the home isolation, Step One contacts the government hospitals to check the availability of beds to ensure that the patient is quickly admitted to the healthcare centre. Step One also has its own network of ambulances and other Covid-related services to make the process smoother. The group has also started a plasma donor and recipient management system in Gurgaon, Mumbai, and Delhi. However, this service is not available in Bengaluru yet.
Volunteering to help Covid patients from home
Siddhangana Karmakar, a volunteer who heads the team for marketing says, “We have over 7000 doctors, more than 2000+ normal citizens like you and me, volunteer their time with project Step One.” Dr Nihad Niloufer who devotes 4-6 hours to the project every week despite her offline practice and personal commitments says, “The experience is really overwhelming. Just one call was enough to start the protocol for saving a patient’s life. There are so many cases where I was able to provide immediate critical care to a patient through this network.”
Dr Anilkumar PL, another volunteer with Project Step one, says that he was able to help patients in dire situations too. “During the lockdown, a patient’s family was locked in their house without food for 48 hours,” he recalls. “We reached out to them through a voluntary organisation and made arrangements for their food. Another patient who contacted us from the outskirts of Bengaluru was having breathing difficulties. His condition was deteriorating rapidly, and our team reached out to him, arranged a hospital bed, and moved him to the hospital just in time and saved him… all this amidst the heavy rains.”
Dr Lata Saini, a doctor who is practising for over 22 years told Residents Watch: “Helping people and being able to ease their pain has made volunteering my time worth it. From taking people out of their Covid-related anxieties to providing them with ambulances, I have been able to help over 9000 people through this initiative since the pandemic began.” For Dr Umakantha Adiga, volunteering with project Step One has been a great experience so far: “I feel a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day having guided 10-15 patients.”
Who can volunteer
As the number of Covid cases continue to soar, Step One is on the lookout for more volunteers to assist them. However, you do not have to be a doctor, nurse or medical professional to contribute. You can be a medical student, counsellor, tele-calling operator, as well as IT, marketing and product management professional. All the organisation needs is for you to dedicate some of your time for the cause. Step One also has internship opportunities for students. “We have a team of HR volunteers to screen through the application and find a suitable role for our applicants,” says Siddhangana. “We conduct training sessions for our screeners and observe our volunteers for a couple of weeks to ensure they are fit for their role.”
You can sign up to be a volunteer with Step One by filling up the application form on projectstepone.org.
