It was a call that distressed them all. A Malayali woman living in the UK had called the Disha helpline number for coronavirus in Kerala, scared and upset. Her husband had tested positive for coronavirus, and she was two months pregnant. It was just the two of them and their six-year-old in the house. He was not admitted in a hospital but asked to remain isolated in home, and she had complications in her pregnancy.

The husband had been looking after the pregnant woman and running the house. She was suddenly clueless with him in quarantine and knowing not what to do. The Disha volunteer she spoke to directed her to the District Mental Health Programme team to get counselling from. At that point, they could only advise her on how to run the house and take the best precautions for all three of them.

This is not a rare distress call from outside the country. Among the 70,000 odd calls that Disha has got till date regarding COVID-19, about ten per cent have come from Malayalis living outside India.

“The coronavirus helpline was launched on January 22 before the first cases were reported in Kerala. From then, we have had calls from outside India. The first calls were mostly to ask about the quarantine protocol in Kerala, and how long they’d have to be in isolation. It is later on when the cases began to increase in other countries that distress calls like the pregnant woman’s began to come. Often, there’d be no clear guidelines on what they had to,” says Akhila V Nair, floor manager at Disha.

Disha as a helpline of the state’s health department had begun functioning in 2013 as an initiative of the National Health Mission and the Government of Kerala. The 16-member team would be pooled in whenever there was a crisis. They had been actively involved in the outreach work of the recent floods in Kerala, the Nipah virus outbreak, the Ockhi cyclone and so on. But it was only now, with the outbreak of the coronavirus that they became so engaged in helping the public with their many anxieties.

“The permanent team consists of 15 counsellors and a floor manager (me). But for the COVID-19 outbreak, 55 more volunteers have been added to attend the calls. Six desks have increased to 30. So that at any time, 30 calls can be attended. There are also 12 health workers and two doctors available during every shift. We work 24 hours a day,” Akhila says.

Recently the state government has opened help desks of NORKA (Department of Non Resident Keralites Affairs) in several foreign countries and distress calls from these places would be directed to them. “We may not be able to do much more sitting in Kerala. A man in Kerala once called to say that his brother in Qatar has tested positive for coronavirus but that he is living with several other men in a den of bachelors. We connected him to the NORKA helpdesk in Qatar,” Akhila says.

In some countries, even people who test positive for COVID-19 may be asked to stay in home quarantine and not admitted in hospitals. There are places where no proper medication is advised and patients are simply asked to take Vitamin C. “When calls from such places come, we connect them to concerned doctors on the panel. They would give advice regarding medicine and food,” Akhila says.

Many calls are anxious ones, especially from the elderly. Some just do not know whom to contact in their country of residence. In some countries, it is not possible to go to hospitals to test for the disease even if you have symptoms. It may take days to get an appointment. “In these cases, again, we can only provide counselling. Only after the helpdesks started could practical help be offered. Problem is the lack of clear guidelines in many countries. We have a proper system here, with clear instructions on the precautions to be taken.”

Calls even come from other parts of the country asking after the migrants to Kerala. Migrant labourers also make calls asking for food and accommodation. Disha has hired the service of people who can speak in the language of the migrant labourers, informed Dr PV Arun, Arogya Keralam Thiruvananthapuram district programme manager. Such calls are handed over to the concerned departments.

Disha helpline number is 1056 or 0471-2552056.