When coronavirus cases rose at an alarming rate in the country, India’s shortage of oxygen became evident. Oxygen is a life-saving gas for those who are severely infected with COVID-19. The oxygen crisis was something that many healthcare experts already warned against; however, the country saw countless lives struggling to catch a breath.
The shortage of oxygen in the country wreaked havoc and the government worked day and night to import tankers and to build new oxygen plants. The military was brought into action to transport the oxygen across the countries. Even neighbouring countries sent essential medical supplies to help India fight the pandemic. However, along with the government, hundreds of people came together to help in any capacity that they could. Many NGOs worked relentlessly to lend a helping hand as every small bit of help matters.
Hemkunt Foundation: Impacting Lives
Hemkunt Foundation is one such foundation that always helps those in need. The foundation believes in the popular Sikh principle “‘Sarbat Da Bhala” i.e Welfare for All. Their team supports those in need and offers relief assistance against disasters. They also strive to improve the livelihoods of the marginalized section so that they can have access to basic human rights. Last year, during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hemkunt Foundation fed over 45,000 marginalised people every day and distributed more than 360 tonnes of cooked food.
The foundation started the COVID relief work this year in April during the second wave when the country was suffering from oxygen crises. The Hemkunt Foundation initially started providing oxygen through cars. However, when more and more critical patients approached them, they realized that they had to scale up their operations and hence came up with a 24X7 ambulance service.
The foundation, however, was not immune to the roadblocks in the supply chain as they raced against the clock to supply oxygen to those in need across Delhi and NCR. Among their biggest challenges was a lack of visibility over their ambulances on the road. The foundation was unable to identify which of their ambulances were free to deploy, on the basis of their location, to the nearest distress call.
Together in Action
To assist Hemkunt Foundation in fighting coronavirus at the forefront and rescue patients in need, LocoNav installed telematics devices in their ambulances. The foundation, with the help of our Telematics solution, is now able to track their ambulances so that they can assign a free ambulance in case of an emergency.
We helped them utilise our ‘Nearby Vehicle Locator’ feature that helps them to assign the ambulance which is closest to the site of an emergency.
The system takes the location, which is a Google map searchable address, and a radius (optional) as an input. Then, it searches for the nearest available ambulance around that address or within that selected radius. If no ambulances are available within the selected radius, then the search radius can be increased. This way, the Hemkunt foundation easily identifies the nearest ambulance from a particular location, and immediately dispatches it to assist those in need.
The Hemkunt Foundation has worked hard day and night to help those in distress and saved many lives. In light of the recent catastrophe that the country went through, LocoNav is proud to play a part in helping India breathe, one step at a time.