Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting organisations, has developed "a very innovative, simple, fit-for-purpose programme" in the fight against COVID-19 that can be scaled up in a quick span of time, its CEO Punit Renjen said on Monday.
"We have designed, I believe, a very innovative, simple, fit-for-purpose programme that is integrated," Renjen told PTI, a day after the "Sanjeevani Pariyojana" (life of project) was kicked off in Karnal district of Haryana.
The programme, designed and supported by Deloitte, the Public Health Foundation of India and the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Haryana, is a supervised, virtual home-care initiative to help people quickly access healthcare for mild to mod "We have created a playbook and codified this, so we can scale it across the state. We are now going to take this and then implement it in the next district, which is Rohtak," Renjen said.
In addition to investing Rs 5 crore on the project, Deloitte has deployed a team 25 of its personnel on a pro bono basis.
The multinational has also come up with a plan to do this as a statewide effort. "This is the first time in the country that we have done this. It (the programme) will allow us to address the current Covid wave. It will allow us to address the third wave if that comes about. But if this programme sticks, it can be an opportunity for us to provide primary healthcare in rural communities," Renjen said in response to a question.
"The real magic here is the integration. For the first time, everything integrated, from the command centre to the telemedicines, virtual health to the home health kits to the tiered hospitals, to the ASHA workers. All of them working together in a coordinated way with the local administration, the deputy commissioner and the superintendent of police," he said.
The programme has seven aspects, including a command control centre, augmenting the existing call centre capabilities with a COVID-19 hotline, mobilising 200 medical students to provide virtual health services for mild to moderate cases with supervision and deploying ALS ambulances and mobile pharmacies.
It also includes providing medical equipment like oxygen concentrators to a field hospital and launching an awareness campaign on home-care protocols and leveraging community workers (the ASHA network) to support in home care.