New Interventions

Covid and Public Health

Since 2020, we have been engaging in responding to the crisis of the COVID pandemic at several
levels during and after the second waves.

Emergency Relief

Apart from providing direct reliefs such as dry ration kits and vegetables kits to those communities that were harshly affected by the lockdown such as sex workers, garments workers, tribal communities, single women and the rural and urban poor during the lockdowns in both 2020 and 2021 we were also part of a broader effort to reach out to migrants and daily wage earners. Through this civil society initiative we were able to reach out to more than 15000 workers for who dry ration kits and food was mobilized through diverse sources including relief organisations, individual donors, local citizen groups etc. We were engaged with the travel arrangements for migrants back to their home states through the government sponsored trains.

Community based interventions

Taking up public health as part of our ongoing work during the pandemic was another part of this new intervention particularly in Bangalore urban district in those communities where SIEDS is already involved. We have been systematically engaging with the public health system by complementing and leveraging its services while doing community based health interventions and surveys in both Anekal and Bagalur Panchayat and reaching out to almost 9200 households. Our interventions include:

  • Being in touch particularly with those identified with comorbidities as part of our survey since they are particularly vulnerable to COVID and extending support whenever required.
  • Dialogues between health professionals, local administration and local health systems to understand better the nature of the pandemic and ground level realities.
  • Arogya Yatras (Health Awareness walk) in the communities with street theatre, role plays, slogans, songs and fliers to spread awareness/destigmatisation messages around COVID and vaccination.
  • Health camps in these communities organised with other public minded hospitals to extend some basic services along with encouraging people to come forward to take vaccinations.
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