As our nation battles the pandemic we are equipped with our only line of defense, the vaccine. India began its vaccination drive in January but by the middle of the year, we experienced a dire shortage of vaccines with still thousands of people left unvaccinated. Pune was emerging as a hotspot for new cases as the number testing positive for the virus kept increasing by hundreds each day.
The Surendra Pathare Foundation decided to provide aid to the government vaccination program to speed up the vaccination process and started a vaccination drive in Kharadi with Appolo Hospitals as its partner. It set up vaccination centers for 40+ societies. These weren’t your simple ‘come stand in line and get vaccinated’ setups. SPF sent out google forms to every family in every society for their phone numbers, mail id and then provided them token numbers and specific time slots. This was so effective that in a single day we were able to vaccinate 3700 people! Over the course of the drive, more than 30000 people have been vaccinated with the SPF Doorstep Vaccination Drive. It took days and nights alike to make this seamlessly hassle-free. It is with great pride that we say it was the largest vaccine drive in Maharashtra.
But the fight is not over yet. While the majority of the residents were vaccinated, there were still a large number of people who weren’t. These included daily wage workers, housemaids, rickshaw drivers, and many other underprivileged people who either couldn’t afford the vaccine or couldn’t spend a day of work for the vaccine. So we at SPF paired up with ACT Grants to tackle this issue. It was a whopping success with 4000 people vaccinated under our drive. While this was a huge accomplishment for us, our work is still not over. These vaccinations were only the first dozes of the 2 dose vaccines. The SPF foundation continues to maintain contact with the people and carry out drives for the second dose. So far 3000 people have been vaccinated with the second dose and the number continues to increase every day.
