Volunteers lead Covid-19 fight in B’luru while braving personal losses

Bengaluru: At a time when Bengaluru, like rest of the country, is battling the surging second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, volunteers from across the city have come forward to help residents while braving personal losses

Bengaluru: At a time when Bengaluru, like rest of the country, is battling the surging second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, volunteers from across the city have come forward to help residents while braving personal losses. From providing meals, supplying oxygen cylinders, arranging hospitals beds to burying the dead, the Good Samaritans have made relentless efforts in coming to the aid of scared and scarred city residents.

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They did all these while battling their own adversities, including losing loved ones to the unprecedented surge of Covid-19 in the past two months.

One such volunteer is Anne Morris, who helped in performing the last rites of 16 victims of Covid-19 on May 14, one of whom was her own uncle. She felt anguish that day like never before while volunteering, something that she has been doing since the first wave of the pandemic. “I have been helping to give decent burial to several victims of Covid-19, but when it came to my uncle, there was no one to help me,” Morris said, recalling her uncle’s ordeal.

Morris, who is also the curator of the Indian Christian Cemetery, began volunteering with food distribution to migrant workers during the nationwide lockdown when the pandemic hit the country in March last year, before moving to help people with burials when Covid-19 deaths spiked in the second wave.

“My uncle needed dialysis and we took him to a private hospital, which charged us more than ₹30,000. It was a daylight robbery and it made me question why I was doing the volunteer work in the first place,” Morris recalled. Besides her uncle, Morris also lost her brother-in-law, another uncle and her godfather to the viral infections, all in the month of May.

While undergoing dialysis, her uncle tested positive for Covid-19 and died in a private hospital. Her 52-year-old brother-in-law succumbed to the infection after he was unable to get a hospital bed. “On May 9, after his saturation levels dropped, we approached multiple hospitals. We asked all volunteer groups we knew of, but we couldn’t find him a bed. It was only after five days, we got an ICU bed, but he died soon after he was admitted. By then, his condition had worsened,” she said.

Morris said she was upset and anguished after suffering losses. “We helped so many and there was no one to help us. I wondered if I should continue to do volunteer work. But now, I’m back to work. A lot of people need help,” she said.

Shahulla Khan, 45, was a third-generation funeral service worker at the Muslim Burial Ground on Mysore Road. According to his family, since the beginning of the pandemic, he had buried more than 300 bodies and even lived in the burial compound itself. He knew several Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials, who reached out to him for help in burying bodies, but when he fell ill, there was no one to help, his family said.

Khaleel Khan, a relative of Shahulla, said they started looking for a bed when he first complaint of difficulties in breathing. As his saturation level began dropping drastically, the family began making frantic calls, even to the BBMP officials he knew.

“We started looking for beds in the last week for April. We couldn’t find any oxygen beds. With help of some volunteers, we were able arrange an oxygen cylinder. We kept him at home on oxygen supply. But we were not able to find more cylinders,” Khaleel said.

He added that whenever they called the BBMP officials they knew, they said there were no government beds available. Once his condition deteriorated, the family decided to take a gamble. “We tried several hospitals, but no beds were available. We then took him to a government hospital and told the security guard that we had reserved a bed. Once we were allowed to go in, we pleaded to the doctor, who allowed him to be on the floor with oxygen support,” Khaleel added.

Hours later, Shahulla passed away. “Despite helping several families during the pandemic, when the virus caught up with him, he got no help,” Khaleel said.

Another volunteer Sagay Raj Ambrose, who has been helping people to find food and oxygen during the pandemic, said he could do little when his younger brother fell sick. “I started volunteering during the first wave of Covid-19. Some told me about a family, where the son was hospitalised and an elderly couple were not able to get food, because they couldn’t get out. With the help of a friend, I delivered ration at their home. It all started there,” said Ambrose, who worked at the Bengaluru international airport.

During the second wave, he helped several families in home isolation with ration kits and oxygen cylinders. It was during this time that he got a distressing call. “On May 6, my 45-year-old younger brother Vijay started facing breathing difficulties and his saturation levels were dropping. As soon as I got the call, I tried to get to the hospital, but nothing was working out,” he said.

Ambrose said besides the non-availability of beds, hospitals were also demanding Covid-19 test reports before admitting patients. “Since his situation was critical, we didn’t have the time for a test, but with the help of a friend, we got a CT scan done. The scan said his condition was really bad,” said Ambrose.

Unable to find an ICU, even with the help of other volunteers, he took his brother to a private hospital, where he was kept in the emergency room. “They gave him oxygen and an injection as well. We kept trying to move him to an ICU, but before we could get it, he passed away,” Ambrose said, wearing a brave face while recalling his brother’s story.

Ambrose continues to be a volunteer.