Rising to the demands of the time, Dermatologist Dr Chiranjiv Chhabra from Delhi has converted her wellness clinics (Alive Wellness Clinics) into Covid tele-support centres to provide medical support and guidance to patients. Dr Chahabra has a team of 12 five medical doctors from different fields such as dermatology, plastic surgery and General Medicine and seven health educators like nutritionists, physiotherapists providing tele-support to enable early treatment to as many patients as possible, preventing complications and need for critical care.
Significantly, the initiative is being offered free of cost for patients. The initiative started on April 26, and the centres are getting over 70 calls a day from not just different parts of Delhi, but states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan as well. Some calls are coming from overseas, from people whose relatives are in India. “Over the past few weeks we have been witnessing an alarming situation where healthcare is crumbling under the weight of the pandemic and patients are running from pillar to post to be able to find a doctor. We have seen a number of people experience severe complications because of a delay in treatment as doctors are heavily occupied treating critically ill patients.
This is the gap we want to bridge through our tele-support initiative. Our main objective is to treat mild and moderately ill patients early so that we can save them from reaching a stage where they would need hospitalisation or oxygen support,” says Dr Chhabra, who has tied up with General Physicians and Chest Specialists to facilitate tele-consultation for patients. Patients who reach out to the Alive Wellness Clinics’ Covid support team are first guided by the internal team of experts followed by a tele-consultation with a specialist. The patients are closely monitored over 15 days through online consultation by the health guides at Alive Wellness Clinics who also facilitate blood tests and radiology investigations, if needed.
“In this difficult situation, as medical experts we want to do our bit in helping as many patients as possible get the right medical care and guidance. A lot of patients tend to deteriorate over a week if treatment is not started immediately. Our team of doctors and health educators is servicing anybody who calls us and focus on starting preliminary treatment immediately. Where needed, we connect these patients to physicians and specialists through tele consultation and our team continues to monitor their health vitals closely for further action,” added Dr Chhabra. Alive Wellness Clinics is a network of seven skin and wellness clinics spread across Delhi, Gurugram, and Chandigarh.
“After this Covid situation calms down a little bit we are planning to launch a service in which we will help people in dealing with post Covid symptoms and how they can take care of themselves,” she adds. “Together as a team lead by Dr Chiranjeev Chhabra, we have started an initiative called Alive to Serve, to bridge the gap between patients and health care workers. Our telesupport initiative is to give medical guidance, monitoring and supporting patients who have mild or moderate illness and are unable to get proper medical care. Our main aim is to not let them reach the severe level of the illness. Feel free to call any of our numbers anytime,” says Nutritionist Nevada Tiwari, one of the team members who has been offering the tele-support.
Patients in need of medical guidance can contact the following between 9:00am to 6:00pm: