COVID-19: Meet DRV, a Disaster Management Organisation working tirelessly to help people

Coronavirus is spreading rapidly all over the world affecting more than a million. In order to bring the situation under control, most of the countries have locked down their services and have requested people to stay indoors, maintain social distancing.

While the lockdown did bring a few chaoses when it comes to day to day activities among the people, the daily workers are the most affected. However, there are a lot of teams working tirelessly to take care of the situation.

One of them is DRV- Disaster Response Volunteers. This is a Disaster Management Organisation with volunteers from different part of the world with a vision to create a risk-free world. Presently, they have taken up a bunch of tasks to help and aid the people and healthcare professionals through our voluntary services.

DRV has a few teams that are specific activity-oriented. This actually makes everything easier both for the volunteers and the people to approach them.

“Within the DRV, we have a few teams that are specific activity-oriented.

Rapid Action Team (RAT)– It works on finding a real-time solution to the COVID-19 related problems, needs, or situations.

Verification Team (VT)– It works on analysing the online data to verify and present the right information to the people at the right time.

Creative Team (CT)– It works on content creation and on finding ways to do public demonstrations to spread awareness online and offline.

Social Media Team (SMT)– It works on finding effective ways to outreach the activities and causes that DRV does through the social media platforms.

R&D Team (RDT)– It works on finding technological and scientific solutions researched, engineered, and developed to reduce the risk of disasters.

Tech Team (TT)-It works on creating interactive web spaces to showcase the works of DRV as well as to let people understand the dynamics of the disasters so that the vulnerable communities can be more prepared.

Admin Team (AT)– It works on finding ways to constantly improve the services that DRV provides and governs the overall operation of the organization,” says Vinoth Kumar, founder of DRV.

“Apart from the RAT, the research work that is taken forward by the RDT of DRV aims to add great value to the people in the present pandemic situation”, he adds.

Explaining more about what are projects that are currently happening in the RDT, Vinothkumar explains, “Three projects are now happening in the RDT.

Hand Sanitizer Dispenser We are creating a simple set-up that will dispense an alcohol-soaked material to let the people pick and use it to cleanse their hands at public where they have no access to water/soap/hand wash.
DIY Mask We are presently designing a cloth mask that has multiple layers of certain materials that cut and stitched according to our custom design that will serve as an alternative to the N95 respirator and generic surgical masks and will still be able to give decent protection against the virus. The design of the mask after research will be open-sourced so that anyone from anywhere in the world can refer to our design and create their own masks. Some important points to notice. – The mask the DRV creates will be affordable and DIY. – One variant of the masks will be given to the health officials treating the positive COVID-19 cases (assuming a worst-case scenario while the N95 runs out of stock). – The other variant will be made by common materials so that any household with a sewing machine can do it themselves for their family, and can also share it with their friends and society. – The masks can be sterilized and can be reused unlike disposable N95 or surgical masks.
Ventilator We have tied up with a Kerala based tech startup to manufacture a cheap automatic ventilator to help the COVID-19 patients with severe pneumonia and serious breathing problem. If a situation comes where the community spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus increases and if the hospitals run out of ventilators to keep the incoming patients alive, our mini ventilator will help.”

Vinothkumar says that they are also creating a database to put up needs and other resources which will be open-sourced.

“We are also creating a Centralized Database which is of course open-sourced. We’ll be putting all possible information about the requests/ availabilities that need/provide food, groceries, medicine, logistics, etc. across India. People can refer to this to find what they need and to give where to wish to.”

These are the current happenings in DRV India.