Meet The Delhi Based Businessman Who Helped Villagers Suffering From COVID

Arvind Arora has opened Covid care centres in 50 districts and dozens of villages in a bid to provide relief to coronavirus patients.

When the devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit India, people were running from pillar to post for hospital beds, oxygen and life-saving medicines. Delhi-based businessman Arvind Arora came forward to help many in this time of crisis. An owner of a CCTV company, Mr Arora decided to convert his office into a Covid care call centre to help out as many people as possible, especially those who reached out to him from faraway villages, where help was not easily available. The help was provided in terms of oximeters, medicines, small oxygen cylinders, thermometers and kits. His staff would receive calls on the helpline set up for the purpose and then medical care relief material was dispatched to various villages in India. His team would receive hundreds of calls everyday, all asking for help and Mr Arora's team ensured help was not denied. Talking to NDTV about his initiative, Mr Arora said, "I heard that the situation in our villages was becoming dire, 20-30 people would die every day. So with God's blessings, we went to the villages and set up COVID-19 camps, for preliminary testing. We made oxygens cylinders available to them, we provided oximeters, thermometers, medicines, sanitisers and masks to the villagers. We did everything we could. But we wanted to help more, so we started giving online medical kits in 50 districts. We put out a helpline number, and my whole team was manning the phones." One such village was Khatta Prahladpur, near Baghpat, where hundreds of people tested positive for coronavirus during the second wave. The local government dispensary had been closed for years, so the villagers had to go to the government hospital for treatment, which was 15 km away. During this time the kits and medicines made available through Arvind Arora's Covid care centres provided a huge relief.