Fight Against COVID-19: Slum Committees’ Efforts Yield Results In Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: Community participation through Slum and Village Committees under the North Zone of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has generated awareness leading to a significant fall in the COVID-19 cases.

Around 110 committees have been carrying out regular awareness and sanitation drive, home inspection and visits for the last two months. As a result, there are only 594 active cases in around 400 slums.

The North Zone had sanctioned Rs 5,000 to each committee as a first-round budget for information education communication (IEC) and awareness. The civic body has released Rs 1 lakh to each ward as a budget to fight against COVID-19.

Besides IEC, the committees have been engaged in promoting family awareness, organising meetings, sanitisation, helping surveillance team, spraying of sodium hypochlorite solution in the affected surroundings and providing up-to-date information about symptomatic cases.

A committee member of Trinath Basti said, “Since the early days of the COVID19 pandemic, we have been working hard to keep every family safe from the coronavirus. The Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) from BMC have also trained us to increase our immune system against the pandemic. Dividing our time-table we are educating every household through campaign meetings, keeping soap and water in various places across the slum for the outsiders’ use. We report every suspected case through the ASHA, Anganwadi worker and Ward Officer.’’

Under the IEC activities, the vehicles have been moving around with message on wearing masks, physical distancing and washing of hands at frequent intervals.