Covid-19, how the Indian Red Cross built a Door-to-Door Oxygen Re-filling campaign

As hospitals in Haryana and most parts of India were facing shortage of beds during the second wave of COVID, oxygen supply became a scarce commodity as the number of patients was rising rapidly. Haryana Red Cross in coordination with Haryana Government launched an online registration portal to provide door-to-door facility for oxygen refilling for the person in need.

The online portal for supply of oxygen cylinders satisfied the social needs as the community was served at a very large scale. Volunteers served tirelessly round the clock, with a minimum period of delivery of oxygen cylinders. Thousands of patients in home isolation benefited from the service of delivering filled oxygen cylinders at home. These services were provided free of cost by the volunteers. Patients’ relatives did not have to wait in line for long hours to refill cylinders during the pandemic.

A portal ‘Citizen Oxygen Requirement Form’ was developed online and the needy person has to upload his or her photograph, %SpO2 (Oxygen Level), doctor’s prescription and other essential basic personal details to get this service at their doorstep. After receiving a request on the portal, the volunteer would take a filled oxygen cylinder and deliver it at the doorstep of the needy person in exchange with an empty cylinder. 

People were trying to find ways to get treatment for their loved ones at home. For instance, Sharda Sabharwal’s son could not get a hospital bed in his hometown or nearby districts for his 81-year-old mother, a resident of Hudu in Haryana. He ran from one hospital to the other in an attempt to get a bed for his mother as she struggled to breathe. She was diagnosed Covid-19 positive and her oxygen level had dropped to 60. He knew that the struggle would be long as there were many others in the queue, each struggling to give their loved ones a fighting chance to survive. He tried his luck by registering on the portal http://oxygenhry.in/. This came out to be a lifeline for his ailing mother as volunteers from IRCS Haryana reached at his doorsteps with an oxygen cylinder. 

Total 27397 requests were received on the portal since the beginning of the initiative in which 7631 requests were rejected due to various reasons like already having a cylinder, wrong address, wrong oxygen level etc. and 19742 oxygen cylinders were delivered. The online portal is still working to accept requests taking into consideration the anticipated third wave.