Daily-wage earner Abu Bakkar Siddiqui is suffering from skin disease and things were getting worse as he could not find a doctor nearby amid the lockdown in the wake of Covid-19 outbreak.

A resident of Abhaypukhuri gaonpanchayat near Mangaldai, he had no option but to seek help at his nearest common services centre (CSC) to get advice from a doctor.

“I was worried not to find any doctor nearby. Neither could I travel to the hospital because of the lockdown. But this centre was of great help to get doctor’s advice. The medicines were prescribed after listening to my problems. Later I bought those medicines,” said Siddique.

The CSC Assam and the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) envisaged a joint strategy – E-Help reaching out to the vulnerable section across the state in hour of need.

At such centres, the patient can speak to doctors through video links. After the conversation, the doctor prescribes the medicine. The patients can download the prescription immediately.

The E-Help initiative also takes care of people in hour of distress. There are many across the state like Siddiqui who have benefited by this innovative scheme of the government.

Besides the non-emergency medical services for citizens through tele-medicine consultation with video- based interaction, E-Help also assists in dissemination of advisories and other vital information through direct and indirect modes like live webcasting, call, SMS and WhatsApp among others.

“It also looks after mental healthcare of citizens, especially elderly and children, through emotional well-being tele-counselling through video-based interaction. The e-Pashu Chikitsa takes care of health of livestock,” Pankaj Chakravarty, deputy secretary and state project co-ordinator, ASDMA, told The Telegraph.

Apart from that, the disbursement of DBT (direct benefit transfer) under Garib Kalyan scheme and PM-KISAN, and other banking services through CSC bank correspondents and digipay are also being done by the E-Help.

“So far, 1,991 tele-medicine calls have been made in the state. There has been a limited availability of doctors due to Covid-19 duties. To tackle this problem, volunteer doctors have been enlisted from Health Down Town Hospital, City Hospital, Sun Valley Hospital and other major institutions. However, there is a need for more doctors to meet the high number of consultation requests,” Chakravarty said.

He said that the CSC VLEs (village-level entrepreneurs) who function as banking correspondents (BCs) and bank mitras have been working hard to enable citizens access their entitlements, including those under Garib Kalyan scheme.

“In the month of April so far, more than 55,000 transactions have been made for withdrawals amounting to more than Rs 11.5 crore. On other hand, close to 6,000 transactions have been for deposits amounting to nearly Rs 1.15 crore,” Chakravarty said.