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Category: Public Health

Vaccinating India: How can CSR make a difference?

India has been reporting over 3,00,000 fresh cases of COVID-19 daily since April 2021, the highest since the pandemic broke out, a clear sign that we need to ramp up immunisation to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

India’s vaccination programme was flagged off in January 2021. The Government has cleared Serum Institute’s COVISHIELD (in collaboration with AstraZeneca) and Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN. Many other vaccines are in the pipeline and in advanced stages of being launched.

The current vaccination coverage accounts for a very marginal percentage of the country’s population and a collaboration between governments, corporates and civil society will be critical for success.

The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility

While the guidelines on corporate involvement keep evolving, the latest CSR amendment allows companies to account for expenditure on COVID-19 vaccines and activities that promote vaccination as CSR spending. However, according to the norms, companies can only claim vaccination cost as CSR activity if they inoculate local communities in a non-discriminatory manner. Vaccinating employees can not be included as a CSR expense. Samhita and the India Protectors Alliance (IPA) have identified three challenges that the vaccination drive currently faces and have put together approaches that could help overcome them.

Strengthening the vaccine drive

Long queues and large congregations at vaccination sites are a common sight, and must be addressed with a more efficient distribution system.
Additionally, with India witnessing significant vaccine wastage, it is imperative to promote optimal utilisation and drastically reduce waste.

To help distribute vaccines more efficiently, IPA has designed the following interventions:
● Deploying and administering the vaccine in large proportions. With the support of private organisations, large cohorts could be covered in a short span of time.
● Identification, registration and mobilisation of beneficiaries at scale.
● Inoculation process, post inoculation monitoring; providing a robust technology platform to manage the programme and monitoring the vaccination of the beneficiaries.
● Community-wide immunisation drives to inoculate at risk vulnerable communities who have either very little or no awareness about the vaccination programme.

Vaccine hesitancy

Vaccine hesitancy refers to the delay in acceptance or refusal to take the vaccine despite the widespread availability of vaccine services. This is influenced by factors such as complacency, convenience, and overconfidence.

To to build greater confidence in the vaccine, IPA has curated the following programmes:
● Leveraging community media platforms for community engagement on COVID-19 vaccine-related information and other health related information among remote, underserved communities in India.
● Pre-recorded messages uploaded on the platform for all the callers to listen to, updated on a weekly basis (more frequently, if required), based on the most frequently asked questions by users or the misinformation reported by field teams. New content pieces will also be developed based on trending questions.

Capacity building & training

Deployment of sufficiently trained vaccinators is the need of the hour. All health workers involved in the implementation of vaccination need to have adequate knowledge and skills to ensure safe and efficient vaccine administration. Training must cover a wide range of aspects — including knowledge on storage, handling, delivery and waste management of COVID-19 vaccines. Training health workers is also critical to address vaccine hesitancy and build public trust.

To better equip healthcare workers, IPA’s interventions include:
● Supporting MoHFW and State Government agencies in developing the healthcare workers’ training manual and creating additional IEC assets such as factsheets and FAQ documents in regional languages.
● Printing and dissemination of the training manual and IEC materials to relevant stakeholders.
● Conducting social mobilisation and advocacy activities.

Vaccination Programme for a leading Corporate Donor

A leading Insurance company, in partnership with Samhita and the IPA, has started a vaccination programme in Maharashtra & Andhra Pradesh which address both community needs and SBI’s priorities on worker’s health and workplace safety.

This is a comprehensive programme designed to assist marginalised and vulnerable communities at every step of the way, from pre-mobilisation to complete vaccination to follow ups.

We are looking for Corporate partners to mobilize communities and get them vaccinated at hospitals or government booths or any other set up approved by the MoHFW.

To learn more and join us in our efforts to immunise India, contact us at csr@dev.samhita.org or fill in the form shared below.

[hubspot type=form portal=9191947 id=3d6e8c3b-36b7-4b69-8e70-c248a021fee1]

India Protectors Alliance – Catalytic achievements with the support of HUL, BMGF and RBL Bank

Over the past two years, we have experienced a unique and unprecedented situation due to the COVID -19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns. The multiplicity nature of COVID-19 needed an all-hands-on approach that saw corporates, philanthropists, civil societies, and individuals come together to support immediate relief efforts and save lives.

Corporate India and non-profit organisations’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the sector at its best to create a better normal, such as The India Protectors’ Alliance (IPA). The IPA was founded in early 2020 with the support of Hindustan Unilever, RBL Bank and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to protect the most vulnerable and at-risk communities. Through this INR 92 Crores Alliance and the collaboration of 59 funders and 52 implementation partners, we have impacted over 5.3 million beneficiaries across underserved communities, vulnerable populations, and frontline Covid warriors such as healthcare and sanitation workers.

IPA’s Approach: what we did & how we did it

IPA was constituted to equip workers in the healthcare and sanitation sectors to pursue their livelihoods safely by protecting them from COVID-19.

Initially, IPA helped fulfil immediate and critical needs like PPE kits and masks for the frontline health and sanitation workers. However, as the body of knowledge about COVID-19 and its management evolved, IPA too evolved to incorporate other interventions, especially during the second wave of the pandemic. We began working on training and capacity building programmes, providing

Key principles followed:

Our Achievements

Total Beneficiaries : 5.3 Million

A) Healthcare Interventions

Strengthening the COVID-19 vaccination drive: We have inoculated over 3.02 million citizens in high-risk and remote areas across 99 districts in 19+ states through our COVID-19 vaccination drives.

Enabling access to critical care equipment & protective gear: Protective gears were supplied to frontline healthcare workers and police officers. Key medical equipment such as ECG machines and maternal monitors were also supplied for regular patients. 30 implementation partners helped supply this equipment across the country, thus helping us reach over 0.35 million people.

Addressing the medical oxygen crisis: In partnership with nine implementation partners, IPA procured and distributed 950 oxygen concentrators and set up four 500 LPM oxygen plants across the country. This helped impact over 0.3 million hospital patients across the country.

Training on COVID and non-COVID skills & knowledge: Through capacity building of healthcare workers and community awareness programs, we impacted nearly 0.13 million lives.



B) Sanitation Interventions

Strengthening community sanitation : Safe sanitation interventions were initiated across Maharashtra to build and improve access to sanitation infrastructures in schools and urban slum communities. Interventions were also planned for women working in informal workplaces. We impacted over 1.42 million lives.

Empowering sanitation workers: With focused sanitation safety, short-term relief and skilling, and entrepreneurial livelihood programs, the IPA has built the long-term resilience of more than 0.082 million sanitation workers.

Key Learnings & Takeaways

1. Collaboration across 59 funders and 52 implementation and knowledge partners quickly proved the potential of a collective impact that can be envisioned for any prospective project.

2. These learnings further underlined the need of building medium to long term infrastructural and training solutions to strengthen the health systems of India.

3. The importance of agility within organisations to take swift strategic decisions and act on them, especially during a crisis, plays a crucial role in effective and timely relief management.

4. Partnerships with the Government are critical and could unlock significant scale-up opportunities.

IPA’s Response to India’s second wave of COVID-19 

IPA Supporting Public Institutions

#PehnoSahi – A corporate mask wearing initiative

Additionally, the Alliance collectively championed mask usage through an online campaign called #Pehnosahi. The campaign was shared by several industry leaders and Alliance members to urge their employees and networks to wear masks correctly for a safe back-to-work transition.

TESTIMONIALS

“The team at the India Protectors Alliance has impressed us with their national reach – from Maharashtra, to Delhi, to Kolkata – to support our frontline healthcare and sanitation workers during the COVID-19 crisis. Thanks to their guidance, our support for critical hospital equipment and PPE kits across these critical locations was executed in a timely, hassle-free manner.”

– Sandeep Batra – Chief Financial Officer, Crompton Greaves

“India Protectors Alliance was extremely helpful and effective in gathering the COVID-19 needs from our stakeholder communities. Its widespread implementation network and total commitment enabled us to expeditiously support the healthcare workers within these communities through the distribution of PPE kits.”

– Sudhanshu Vats – Chief Executive Officer, Essel Propack

Why the health of sanitation workers needs to be our society’s concern?

“In a world without sanitation workers, business and daily life would come to a halt”.

It may seem too extreme to state but is nevertheless true. Without sanitation workers, the functioning of our ecosystem will halt as supply chains of products and services are adversely affected.

Samhita believes that it is essential to ensure preventive health care for our sanitation workers to not only ensure the smooth functioning of our society but also enable them to live a life of dignity. Our WASH platform and, more recently, our IPA platform aims to put money where our mouth is.

To know more about our approach, read this article written by Priya Naik, Ragini Menon and Tushar Carhavlo for CNBC-TV18.

Click here to read the article

Treat sanitation as public good: UN at launch of hygiene fund

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on poor hygiene and sanitation practices like never before. With good hygiene practices having taken centre stage in public discussions in 2020, the United Nations has grown louder in its calls for treating sanitation as a “public good”.

In line with this agenda, late last year the UN created the Sanitation & Hygiene Fund to provide accelerated funding to countries with the heaviest burden and the lowest ability.

Click below to read more about what global governance is doing to prioritise sanitation as a governance agenda.

Click here to read more

Clicking on this link will take you to an external site

Beyond Business – Contributions to Social Initiatives

Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) & Samhita have launched the report Beyond Business – Contributions to Social Initiatives.

Member companies of the @Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance have been at the forefront of CSR activities in India with remarkable contributions in the fields of public health, education, and environment. Even during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, IPA companies have been quick to respond to the needs of the hour through provision of equipment and capacity building.

This report maps the role of and impact created by Indian pharmaceutical companies through their social initiatives while simultaneously charting out the future of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for the sector.

Click here to download the report

The key to COVID-19 prevention in slums

Slums across India have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis. 42% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums and therefore they require carefully planned measures to ensure that preventative and primary care remain accessible.

The Bridgespan Group and WHO emphasise that community participation is the key to implement any COVID-19 preventive interventions in the slums.

This is as a model of care, designed while incorporating community participation is more likely to be accepted and effective in the long-term. To elaborate on the practicality of their recommendation, they describe activities where communities have been engaged and relay how this principle helped the programs in Mumbai slums.

Click here to read the article

Are healthcare facilities accessible to India’s tribals?

“India no longer has the luxury of continuing to wait and watch as millions of its tribal peoples suffer and die from preventable causes.”

There is a much higher incidence of maternal and under-five mortality, stuntedness, tuberculosis, and cardiovascular diseases among India’s 104 million tribals compared with the larger population.

Piramal Swasthya and The Bridgespan Group map out the reasons for the lack of reduction of health challenges in tribal areas based on their field studies.

They outline factors such as barriers in access to healthcare and information, insufficient number of public health facilities, and lack of data.

They stress that for scalable and population-wide impact to be achieved, especially to meet India’s national aspirations of Sustainable Development goals of health and well being- a focused and collaborative approach between all stakeholders of society is the only way forward.

Read the full article

Kimberly Clark | Making lives better through purpose driven brands

The global effort to achieve sanitation and water for all by 2030 is extending beyond the household to include institutional settings such as separate washrooms in schools and workspaces. 

About 94% of women are employed in the informal sectors, according to the National Women’s Commission. Such informal sectors lack basic sanitation facilities including toilets. Public toilets, even if available, are often unsanitary and poorly maintained. Without access to toilets, women and girls develop coping strategies like drinking less water that in turn increases the risk for women’s health problems and their well-being, especially in times of menstruation. The extent of the problem is large in the school ecosystem across India

With the mission to create better workplaces that are healthier, safer and more productive, KCP in partnership with Samhita, designed two projects- 

  • Provide improved sanitation infrastructure in rural schools in Maharashtra and nudge children to adopt better sanitation habits
  • Provide increased access to better sanitation facilities for women working in informal markets

How did we impact 2000+ women and children’s lives

Project 1- The project aimed at solving two key challenges-

  • Poor usage of toilets by children in schools, and
  • Absence of hand washing facilities at critical junctures

We collaborated with the Swachh Maharashtra Grand Challenge, a first-of-its-kind open innovation platform, in partnership with the government, corporate & social sector to address the key challenges in the sanitation ecosystem; by identifying and piloting innovative programme models across sanitation value chain. We identified 4 major components under this setup-

How to address the school sanitation ecosystem

Project 1 – The project aimed at solving two key challenges –

  • Poor usage of toilets by children in schools, and
  • Absence of hand washing facilities at critical junctures

We received 50+ innovative solutions from across the country. A thorough review of the applications led us to select the most innovative and sustainable programs that would help build an impactful ecosystem in school sanitation. KCP and Samhita together set the journey from selection to knowledge dissemination for the selected programs:

  • Providing grants to selected pilot programmes
  • Coaching & mentoring
  • Project monitoring & evaluation, and
  • Knowledge dissemination.

The project impacted 2000+ children of Chandrapur, Maharashtra.

How to help women access sanitation in informal markets

The second project aimed at addressing the need for safe sanitation facilities for women working in informal markets. We shortlisted GARV TOILETS and CORO as implementation partners. The project provides sanitation facilities with following features:

To provide holistic, effective and sustainable sanitation impact, four components were designed:

  • Localised Behaviour Change Communication
  • Menstrual Hygiene Management
  • Operations & Maintenance
  • Waste Management

To support the end-to-end implementation of the project, Samhita leveraged their in-house expertise through the following stages- providing operational plans, developing standard operating procedures, monitoring and evaluation progress and outcomes and providing capacity building support for the implementation partners.

The project impacted 2000+ women in Kurla, Mumbai, Maharashtra.

Geographies

Project 1: Chandrapur Maharashtra

Project 2: Kurla, Mumbai, Maharashtra

Impact Numbers

4000+ Lives Touched

WASH Platform | Wash Grand Challenge (2019)

The WASH Platform builds synergistic collaboration between multiple stakeholders from the Private Sector, Development Sector and the Government, to identify, implement and replicate high impact projects across the sanitation value chain, starting from the state of Maharashtra.

The platform is a joint initiative between Samhita Social Ventures and India Sanitation Coalition in partnership with The Government of Maharashtra, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with UNICEF and CEPT University as knowledge partners.

Reach out

2nd Floor, Jagdamba House, Jay Prakash
Nagar, Goregaon East, Mumbai,
Maharashtra 400063, IN

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csr@samhita.org

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