Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram: India’s de-facto healthcare helpline

“A friend’s grandma is critical. Please amplify. She requires an ICU hospital bed”, “Urgently need an ICU bed in Vadodara for a 67 Y/O. RT to amplify”, “Super Urgent: Need an urgent ventilator bed. The patient is in very critical condition”, “Need ventilator in Vadodara for one COVID19 patient, have checked government hospitals, and the beds are full. If anyone can help, then please DM.”
Cries for help for COVID-related resources have clouded individuals’ Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook feeds in India.

As India continues to break COVID records every day, the already-ailing government helpline numbers have reached saturation. The central toll-free helpline number, 1075, is not reachable. Another central helpline number, +91-11-23978046, had its line busy for 25 attempted calls by Our Vadodara. Gujarat COVID helpline, 079-23250818, has its number switched off. The Gujarat health helpline number, 104, is unresponsive.
When millions of Indians have been crying for help, a rather unlikely medium in the form of social media has emerged to help worrisome citizens.

On people resorting to social media, Kumar Manish, an active volunteer at gujaratcovidsupport.org, said, “Ideally, the government should have been acting as efficient modes of grievance support. But due to a lack of communication from the officials, volunteers are now having to search, contact, and verify leads to provide accurate information regarding resources.” Kumar Manish has been responding to help on Twitter constantly. According to him, Twitter is potentially the best medium to generate leads for help. He said, “Twitter, as a medium, is not only responsive and fast but also has decision-makers who can tangibly respond to help.”

Celebrities and influencers have also left no stone unturned to bring to fruition their mass following on different platforms. Mitra Gadhvi, an actor with a following of 196.9k on Instagram, has been working round-the-clock alongside his team to help the people in need. He said, “We start getting queries from 9 AM and receive them till 4 AM the next day. We have lost count of the number of queries, but we have resolved more than 400 one-to-one queries in the last week.” While recalling one such incidence, he said, “Two days after a 32-year-old COVID positive woman gave birth to a child, her oxygen levels depleted critically.”
The group worked tirelessly to get leads and eventually found a bed for her in the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital. Thanks to the power of social media amidst adversity, from a critical situation at eight in the night, the woman had recovered until the next day’s sunrise.

However, information on social media comes with its set of obstacles. The bombardment of information from users on the internet can become overwhelming to deal with. Independent organizations like Gujarat COVID Support have made sure that the team of volunteers verifies leads and deletes the resolved queries to avoid confusion and curb the spread of misinformation.

The data-equipped government with its communication channels in shambles now looks reliant on people to relay information on social media. Owing to that, for the last few weeks, retweets, Instagram stories, shares, highlights, posts, likes, and DMs have become synonymous with helpline numbers in the country.