On 13rd November around 7p.m. two separate phones alerted with sms tune in jagdalpur. One was of Dr. Maitri , home isolation incharge and another phone was of Nodal officer of bastar noni.
Message reads
"Urmila pandey ,His/Her
Oxygen Level is less than 93.Patient ID: PID007260 Patient Mobile No
97$$486795, Tehsil: Bastar, District: Bastar"
Officials, after receiving the
message promptly contacted the patient. It was an emergency. The patient
is a 65-year-old lady who had oxygen saturation level just 85. Immediately
an ambulance was sent to her home and the patient was expeditiously shifted to
the nearby Covid care hospital, Medical college Dimrapal Jagdalpur .
The message was triggered by the
system as soon as patient entered his vital signs into Bastar Noni web portal -
a smart technological solution to the management of covid-19 cases, an
initiative of Bastar Administration.
From the complete lockdown to the
opening up of almost all the area we have come a long way since the first case
of corona emerged on 27th of May 2020 in Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, It is
now clear, more than ever, that for the foreseeable future the risk of getting infected
with Covid-19 can’t be eliminated, but only managed. The use of masks and
social distancing norms as emphasised by the Chief Minister Shri Bhupesh Baghel
himself i.e. do gaj ki duri aur masks hai jaruri, are the only
solution in our hands at the moment. With the same motto the Bastar
Administration has left no stone unturned to control and contain the spread of
the corona virus in the district. For this purpose, On the one hand the cycle
of testing, contact tracing and isolating and treating positive ones is going
on in good pace and on the other hand public awareness campaigns engaging all
the sections of society, volunteers and NGOs are in full swing.
Out of many initiatives during
pandemic time, one area where the Bastar district administration excelled is
the management of home isolated patients through the smart technological
intervention.
As the government relaxed the
norms for home isolation, most of the patients are opting for home isolation as
majority of new patients have mild or no symptoms in general and in such a
scenario, the number of home isolated patients are bound to increase. With
experience, it was realised that manually tracking a large number of home
isolated patients would be a very tedious task and for that, a large number of officials
needs to be deployed for accurately monitoring and management thereof. To
address all such issues the district administration came up with a
technological solution to monitor the health status of home isolated patients
through a dedicated web portal. The Bastar noni app was launched by honourable
minister Dr Premsay singh tekam on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
Soon after the launch of the app,
the registration in bastar noni web portal was made compulsory for all the
patients opting for the home isolation. It has been more than a month and the
bastar noni is living up to its expectations. In Bastar noni, patients
need to update their daily health report which consist of the symptoms detail
and other vital signs such as oxygen saturation level, pulse and temperature.
Such a report needs to be updated at least 2 times a day, if a
patient feels the need, then he can submit his report status as many times
as he wants in a day. There is a dedicated back end team working to assist and
monitor daily reports of the patients. under the Bastar noni, there is a
control room and a helpline with a team consist of qualified doctors and
trained nurses monitoring daily reports of patients and consulting the needy
patients through phone round the clock.
We have made a separate provision
in the web portal to track the high-risk patients who are above 50 years of age
and having any other comorbidities. Such patients get regular tele-counselling
from the helpline and control room.
Bastar noni helpline and web
portal is brainchild of Collector and DM Shri Rajat Bansal (IAS), under his
leadership bastar district is successfully containing spread of corona. He is very
particular about medical care of home isolated patients and made sure that there
should be no fatality, whatsoever, caused due to the administrative lapses.
Therefore we introduced a high alert
message facility in the web portal, under which, whenever a patient enters his
vital signs and if it is found to be beyond normal range (normal range for
oxygen saturation level is 93 to 100, pulse is 60 to 100 and temperature below
98.5 F ) an alert message is triggered and sent to Dr Maitri and simultaneously
a copy of such message is also sent to Nodal officer of Bastar noni.
Immediately after receiving such a message, the medical team consults with
patients and depending upon the severity of the situation a decision is taken
whether to shift such patient to medical college or prescribe a suitable
remedy.
The Bastar noni web portal
being a successful technological solution to the rapidly changing Covid-19
situation attracted the notice of the state government as well as the neighbouring
district. we are getting many inquiries regarding the functionality and
effectiveness of such systems from all spheres/concerned.
To make the portal more
productive, we update medical bulletin in it, on a daily basis which gives
details, such as the number of positive cases, number of tests done along with
daily occupancy of the covid care facilities in the district. One important
feature of portal is that it takes patients location at the time of submission
of daily report which helps administration to locate home isolation breach
cases.
As many of the people especially
in rural areas don’t have an android smart phone, so we made bastar noni as a
web portal not as an android App. Also, for the convenience of people we made
it bilingual (hindi and English). Being a web portal, it can be accessed by any
phone be it a smart phone, a windows phone, IOS, or a feature phone or even
from any computer. The only thing required is access to the internet.
Bastar noni is an illustration of
good governance and also demonstrate how technology can assist administration in
difficult times in disaster or in pandemic like Covid.
Pankaj Singh,(Nodal Officer of Bastar Noni)
