ECHO India, Naukri.com in pact to mobilise healthcare professionals against Covid-19

To tackle the challenges imposed by the current coronavirus crisis, healthcare non-profit ECHO India in association with Naukri.com virtually launched a unique initiative — Covid Healthcare Professionals (CHP) — on August 10.

The initiative aims to bridge the demand and access gap between highly skilled health professionals and healthcare facilities to manage and contain increasing Covidcases across India, as per the joint official release.

This comes after the NITI Aayog had called upon non-profits and citizen volunteers to be a part of India’s fight against Covid-19 earlier this year.

As the cases continue to rise, public health facilities are overburdened to take care of a large number of patients.

The CHP initiative aims to play a vital role in the country’s battle against the coronavirus outbreak. Under the initiative, trained healthcare professionals will be deployed at healthcare facilities that are facing a shortage of skilled professionals to meet the several challenges emerging out of Covid -19, the release mentioned.

Kumud Rai, Chairman and Managing Trustee, ECHO India, said in the official statement: “ECHO India has been instrumental towards building a nation’s capacity in the areas of healthcare and education. In the midst of this ongoing pandemic, we are witnessing a huge gap between available healthcare professionals and the rapid spread of the disease.”

Rai added: “Through this synergistic collaboration with Naukri.com, we aim to address the needs of the healthcare sector amid Covid-19. Our vision to enroll more than 10,000, skilled and well-trained resources at the portal, in the next couple of weeks, so that they are available to join India’s fight against coronavirus.”

Arvind Lal, Chairman, Dr Lal Path Labs, said: “Today, there are many experienced, well-skilled and dedicated healthcare professionals nationwide willing to serve Covid patients but our healthcare facilities have no easy access to them. CHP can help change that.”

Positive response

ECHO India and Naukri.com noted that the sole intention of this endeavour is to strengthen the preparedness and response measure of the nation’s healthcare infrastructure.

Arun Duggal, Chairman, Covid Healthcare Professionals Initiative, said: “The initiative has witnessed a tremendous response so far, with, more than 1000 professionals from 26 States have registered at our portal. In the next phase, ECHO and Naukri will work together to place the registered professionals in hospitals and healthcare facilities.”

The initiative has expanded its scope to recruit skilled healthcare professionals (like doctors, nurses, support staff and lab technicians) with healthcare facilities (like hospitals, telemedicine providers, diagnostic labs) to meet the demands of the healthcare sector in distressing times.

The CHP initiative is built on an advanced algorithm, designed to match the skills of the professionals via a simple five-step process — register, match, shortlist, train and deploy — handled by an expert team of ECHO India and Naukri.com, according to the official release.