Help for COVID-ravaged India

Helping children stay safe and healthy

In India right now, no one is safe. With a new strain of COVID-19 that puts children more at risk ravaging the country, families are struggling to cope. Save the Children is responding to support children  and families with medical care, food deliveries and counselling.
 
Uttar Pradesh, in the north of the country, is one of India’s largest states and also its poorest. Here broken families abound, as the men migrate to nearby New Delhi for higher-paying work and women and children remain behind in the villages.

It’s here that five-year-old Kishan could have easily been forgotten as just another casualty in the COVID-19 crisis. Since he was six months old, he’s been suffering from chronic ear infections. But in lockdown, struck with another ear infection, there was no support for the little boy who was in desperate pain and needed medical attention.

Photo: Kishan, with the support of his parents, received timely medical treatment
at the Community Health Centre,during the deadly pandemic.
Credits: Save the Children

Continuing health service safely

With his father having lost his textile job in New Delhi due to the lockdown, and having walked back to their remote village, there was no money to get Kishan to the Community Health Centre, let alone the medication he needed.
 
That’s where Save the Children stepped in getting Kishan and his family to a Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist at the Community Health Centre to receive treatment safely during the pandemic. Kishan was able to get the medication he needed, and a month on, his infection has cleared.

We also supported the family with the essentials they need to get by while the lockdown is in place and his father, Ashis is still without work. “Save the Children provided us with food that includes rice, dal, oil, salt, sugar, tea, spices, wheat flour, onion, potatoes, soap, comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, towels, undergarments, hair oil, cream, Dettol, shaving kit, which helped my family survive as I still couldn’t find a source of income,” he explains.
 
Save the Children is responding to India’s COVID-19 crisis by ensuring children are protected. We are providing oxygen, food and hygiene packs, education and livelihood support, and counselling. Thanks to our generous supporters, we are meeting the challenge to reach those in need, just like Kishan.