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A flood of calls as COVID rages on
A lifeline for desperate people – 247 has seen a flood of calls seeking succour in these terrible times of COVID-19.
Set up by the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), the apex professional organization of the medical profession, some years ago, the hotline has been reactivated to support the people desperate for advice, guidance and mostly if critically ill in finding a hospital bed. 
Some of the queries from 247 have been basic such as: “If I have recovered from COVID-19, should I get an RT-PCR done before reporting back to work physically?”
However, others have been more emotional. SLMA’s Dr. Ruvaiz Haniffa refers to a frantic call from Kurunegala by a 16-year-old girl.
“My mother has got COVID-19 and so has my sister. What can I do,” had been the plea from the distraught teenager, to be met with reassurances from the young doctors fielding the calls and doable advice.
The SLMA hotline along with the 1904 SMS Gateway has received the nod of the Health Ministry from the Director-General of Health Services Dr. Asela Gunawardena in the form of the circular ‘Guideline for Management of COVID-19 Evacuation Through an Integrated Helpline Information System’.
Explaining the backdrop in which the line was reactivated, Dr. Haniffa says that it was an old service established many years ago, where people could call in with health queries but which had gone into disuse. When the pandemic hit the country last year it had been reactivated to provide advice but on a small scale which however did not have the capacity to respond to a big flow of queries. 
With the exponential upswing of COVID-19 as the Delta variant spread, hospitals being overwhelmed and home-based care being introduced for asymptomatic (without symptoms) or mildly symptomatic patients, the Council of the SLMA which is led by Dr. Padma Gunaratne had discussed the issue on August 6. This followed Immediate Past President Prof. Indika Karunathilake bringing up the matter.
The Council had discussed at length whether the SLMA could meet a high inflow of calls and also sustain the hotline.
“We decided to ‘trial’ it,” says Dr. Haniffa who was selected to head the 10-member Doc247 COVID-19 Advisory Committee.
Training a pool of 31 doctors drawn from the Inter-Collegiate Committee of the SLMA, the trial had got off the ground on August 8. It was no surprise that there was a flood of calls, 160 to be exact, without any publicity or advertising, just by word-of-mouth.
The horror tales came too – of oxygen saturation dropping of those in their homes, says Dr. Haniffa, explaining that the pool of doctors used information being disseminated by the Health Promotion Bureau as otherwise there could be conflicting messages being given to the people.
On the run, the SLMA then decided to also build a pool of specialists to whom could be directed complex medical issues for answers as these were matters of life and death.
Now the service is in full swing.
| 242 doctors, 89 specialists on the job Numerous are the callers – 2,357 up to midnight on Thursday – who are accessing 247 on a mobile and 1247 on an SLT-landline, which operate 24 hours a day and in all three languages of Sinhala, Tamil and English. The calls arebeing handled by 242 doctors and 89 specialists working on a roster basis. The network responding to this dire national need includes the SLMA, and the service providers – Mobitel, Dialog, Hutch and Airtel. Dr. Ruvaiz Haniffa explains that once the 247 team establishes the priority need of a caller, it will initiate the transfer of any patient requiring hospital admission – to a secondary/tertiary level treatment centre allocated by the ministry – by coordinating with the ambulance services. If relatives can transport the patient, the 247 team would communicate to them where he/she should be taken. The physical triaging centres where the patients would be sent are: Colombo district – Kosgama, Nawagamuwa, Avissawella and the Athurugiriya & Wethara District Hospitals Kalutara district – Darga Town, Sripali and the Ingiriya, Matugama & Agalawatte District Hospitals Gampaha district – Dompe, Radawana & Divulapitiya District Hospitals and the Werallawaththa & Seeduwa Brandix Intermediate Care Centre | |