Mercy Angels: For 3 months (Apr-Jun), MM operated the sole hearse service in Bengaluru named “Mercy Angels” to transport COVID deceased. With a team of 4 helpline agents & 30+ ground volunteers, MM has completed 700+ last journeys of COVID deceased during Covid 1.0 & ~50 non-covid last journeys done during the lockdown.
Covid Oxygen Centre: With the support of APPI, MM facilitated & helped HBS Hospital to open & operate an Oxygen Centre closeby having 32 rooms/ beds. This centre hosted patients recovering from COVID who are discharged from HBS but need to be monitored closely, or admits those with mild symptoms. It helped enhance HBS hospital capacity & free beds for more critical patients at the hospital. Over 250 patients benefitted from this COC operations.
Covid Hospital: One of the MM NGOs, HBS Hospital, became a dedicated COVID facility with 56 beds since 4-Jul-20.In its first 2 months of COVID operations, HBS served 1000+ Covid patients during Covid 1.0 & became a leading COVID hospitals in Bengaluru. It was also one of the few hospitals providing life-saving dialysis procedures to COVID patients. Infrastructure of the hospital was significantly upgraded with support from APPI and other Donors. In many cases, if the patient was very poor and unable to pay the pending bill, the MM NGOs raised funds and cleared the bills.
Mercy Booths: With the support from APPI, MM has launched over 45 Field Booths in over 39 vulnerable areas across Bengaluru that screened body temperature, SPO2 levels, Blood Pressure etc. and did 25,000+ GRBS (Sugar) test (supported by Rotary) as well. The booths provided vital on ground support and help to remove stigma around COVID, spread awareness, provide support for COVID testing, Hospital admissions, free ambulance & emergency Oxygen Services and connecting to the local UPHC. A total of 2 lakh Plus people benefitted.
Mercy Migrants: In the rush of reaching safely to their families, Migrants were congregating at bus stands and were being charged an exorbitant amount for traveling. This initiative operated from 1-Jun-2020 to 2-Jul- 2020 to help guide & provide free transport more than 1,000 migrant laborers to the right train stations where trains were departing to their hometowns.
Mercy Awareness: In the initial days of lockdown, awareness campaigns on COVID & importance of social distancing were run by MM in the slum areas in tandem with police and government authorities. 10 Megaphones having brief pre-recorded messages were played in 3 languages (Kannada, Urdu, Tamil) with a focus on slum areas. Street plays were also being rolled out to increase awareness.