The CPM has decided to set up safe homes at a few places in Bengal for Covid-19 patients with mild or no symptoms as it feels government infrastructure is inadequate to handle the rising number of coronavirus cases and the party should stand by people during a pandemic.

The first safe home will be opened at the CPM office in North 24-Parganas’s Nimta on Wednesday. The Congress is also involved in the Nimta project.

CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty and Congress veteran Abdul Mannan will jointly inaugurate the eight-bed Dr Sankar Sen Safe Home at Rabindra Palli in Nimta.

CPM’s North Dumdum MLA Tanmay Bhattacharjee took the initiative to set up the safe homes.
Bhattacharjee said the safe homes would offer ambulance services, ECG tests, screening of oxygen level and other medical facilities at rates charged under the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) to Covid patients. “But people belonging to the financially weaker section of the society will be offered services for free,” the MLA added.

The Nimta safe home will have eight doctors, four technicians, two trained nurses and 100 dedicated volunteers. The team will be on round-the-clock duty to provide support to patients as well as their
families.

Bhattacharjee said: “We have arranged for PPE kits for the volunteers and they will be provided with medical insurance of Rs 5 lakh.”

The safe homes will work in coordination with the state health department and the team of volunteers will provide updates to the officials concerned about patients. In case of an emergency, the volunteers will shift the patient to the nearest Covid hospital.

Asked whether the model would be replicated across the state, CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty said: “It won’t be a pan-Bengal model. That’s the job of the state government and it has miserably failed to do it. We will set up similar centres at a few places. This is an initiative entirely by the party and the Congress has come forward to support it.”

Congress leader Pradip Bhattacharya said: “We have asked our workers in different districts to assess the possibilities of setting up quarantine centres. We are primarily trying to figure out how to source doctors, medical professionals and medicines.”

Reiterating the CPM’s offer to the state government to use its cadres as Covid volunteers, Chakraborty said: “We had said our volunteers would work for the cause of the Covid-affected people and the (Nimta) centre is proof that we are sincere in what we say.”

CPM leaders said the effort of the CPM in Bengal reflected what the party’s Visakhapatnam unit had recently done by throwing open its office to set up an isolation centre for Covid patients.

"To begin with, we are starting with the eight-bed safe home at our party office. But in case of emergency, this can be increased up to 40 beds within 24 hours,” Bhattacharjee said.

The recently announced Covid management protocol of the government advocates development of satellite health care facilities for asymptomatic patients by local bodies and private organisations.

This, the government feels, will help ramp up accommodation facilities in view of the rising number of infected people.