By Archana Sharma

Jaipur, May 15 (IANS): Dungarpur, a small Rajasthan town, has scripted a success story by bringing down the Covid death toll by 50 per cent with the proactive approach of panchs, sarpanchs, ward councillors, ANM, village committees and senior officials.

These custodians of administration worked as a team and ensured each household was visited and everyone with COVID symptoms was identified and medicinal kits were distributed to them.

"Over 52 per cent hospital beds now lie vacant in this district after we started an intensive drive 'My Ward, My Village, My District Covid free campaign' under which Covid patients were identified at preliminary stage and cured with medicines to check the Covid spread at initial stage.

"A team of 30 officials in the last four days made door to door visits in small villages situated on hillocks and identified 13,512 patients with ILI symptoms at the initial stage. A medical kit was given to each of them immediately without delay.

"The campaign helped in bringing down the death rate," said district collector Suresh Kumar Ola adding that in many cases, it was seen that people were hiding the Covid symptoms and did not want to share their ailments or symptoms.

"Eventually, in 4-6 days, they were turning serious and had to be shifted when their oxygen level went down to 40-50.

"Hence we started an innovative campaign to identify such patients at preliminary stage, home quarantined them, monitored them and made them aware of oxygen level etc which worked miracles."

"We worked as a team with sarpanch, ward panch, etc and visited 3,01,779 houses and surveyed 16,32,568 members.

A total of 13,512 patients were identified with Covid-19 symptoms, 22,560 medical kits were given, 13,595 people were quarantined and other 800 were brought to health centres.

Proning technique was shared with patients and those under home isolation were motivated. All these initiatives helped in cutting down the mortality rate by 50 per cent.

The results were seen in last four days as on May 8,389 patients had tested positive, however, on Friday, 297 tested positive out of which 235 recovered.

Ola said that over 200 patients were in hospitals in April while now, the number has fallen to around 150.

A total of 155 beds are lying vacant out of 305 beds available in the Covid centres and oxygen is also available for patients who need it, he added.

"Those needing medical help should come to hospital and we shall further follow up on those identified with ILI symptoms, Ola added.