Our Response to the
COVID-19 Pandemic
Every day, the COVID-19 situation across the globe continues to shift and surge. In India and Bangladesh throughout the first and second waves of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, we saw the health facilities and healthcare workers we support become overwhelmed, grappling with shortages of staff, oxygen, and basic healthcare supplies.
The pandemic underscored and accelerated the need for family caregivers to become a more formalized part of the health sector. Hundreds of thousands of patients and families are being forced to manage the illness by themselves at home. Family caregiving is now more critical than ever.
We found ourselves in a unique position to contribute, and we continue to implement and refine our COVID-19 Care Companion Program and other response efforts.
Our efforts have evolved throughout the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, and include the following:
-
Training COVID-19 positive patients in home isolation and their families through our teletraining Care Companion Program (CCP). With a team of 154 in-house teletrainers, we reached 67,814 households with live teletraining and 82,396 with support via IVRS messaging through our inbound, live support helpline.
-
Supporting a network of over 100 NGOs and grassroots organizations to train their staff on COVID-19 appropriate behaviors and information, so they could spread awareness and train the communities they work with.
-
Distributing essential aid and raising awareness to underserved facilities in regions with the greatest need. Witnessing the severe unmet need for life saving medical supplies, we utilized our network to procure and distribute equipment, basic medications, and supplies to high-need facilities, including 250 oxygen concentrators.
-
Creating and customizing accurate, relevant, and easily digestible content for high-needs populations on information regarding varied topics of the COVID-19 pandemic. With NGO and government partners in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, we created and adapted content to address emerging topics, such as vaccine hesitancy, managing COVID-19 at home, and additional precautions to take during this emergency. Updated content is available on our website.
-
Continuing to support our network of nurses across 327 facilities who are on the frontline, and the patients and families they reach daily, including answering their questions over WhatsApp. Acknowledging the heightened challenges of the pandemic, we launched a collaborative initiative with the Government of Punjab and Mannah Wellness to support healthcare workers, offering a range of free individual and group mental health sessions.
For real-time updates, please follow @noorahealth on Twitter or Instagram, where we will be sharing insights and data from the frontlines of the response.
Ways You Can Support
If you would like to learn more about any of our initiatives or to find ways to collaborate, please reach out to us at covid19@noorahealth.org.
Specifically, we can support more organizations with:
-
Our capacity building through training of frontline staff
-
Providing access to our helpline
-
Supporting outreach to home isolated patients
Other Ways You Can Support
-
Please share our openings (all based in India or Bangladesh) among your networks.
-
Support our work and expanding our programs by donating today.
Response Activities To-Date
Updated March 2022
On a hopeful note, we are immensely inspired by our local partners, nurses, trainers, and team who have stepped up in a desperately unique time.
We will continue to share their stories in the weeks and months to come.
We’ve believed all along
that it takes a family to improve
health outcomes and save lives.
This crisis puts that belief front and center. If we can provide any health materials or, if you would like to discuss how we can work together, please reach out to our team at covid19@noorahealth.org
Connect with us on Instagram for more updates & health education content