The money allotted for COVID-19 response by the foundation has been increased to Rs 2,125 crore from Rs 1,125 crore, to include in its ambit, vaccination across 10 states, with a commitment to increase this further if the need demands.
Azim Premji Foundation, started in 2001 by the Chairman of Wipro, Mr. Azim Premji, has silently been at the vanguard of saving lives in the grim times of COVID-19 and already touching the lives of crores of people, the foundation is working tirelessly to collectively fight the pandemic.
The integrated healthcare support has built capacity and enabled operations to serve over 15 crore people in more than 100 districts in some of the most deeply disadvantaged regions of the
country. This includes:
a. On-the-ground pandemic surveillance, monitoring, awareness building, and community mobilization across more than 200 blocks, including people capacity development, operations, and relevant equipment.
b. Public healthcare system capacity creation including over 10,000 oxygenated beds, 1000 ICU beds, 100 testing centers with approximately 80,000 per day testing capacity (including automated high throughput systems) and augmented facilities for treatment and prevention.
c. Additionally, support to around 45 public-spirited hospitals serving the most vulnerable populations, with similar equipment, consumables, manpower, and operating expenditure. Our humanitarian support (including the equivalent of almost 54 crore meals) reached over 1.3 crore people across 27 states and 3 union territories and has helped regenerate the livelihoods of an additional 83 lakh people. Livelihood regeneration support includes inputs for agriculture and allied activities, as well as access to welfare entitlements for the most vulnerable populations of drought-prone regions of the country.
Of course, given the size of these efforts, it was imperative to have as many hands-on board as possible. The efforts of the foundation have been enabled by a team of 1600 members spread across 50 districts from their own organization, over 55,000 team members of around 800 partner organizations, over 10,000
public (government) school teachers whom they work with and about 2500 alumni of Azim Premji
University, along with Wipro’s technical expertise and distribution reach.
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Most importantly, financial commitments. The money allotted for COVID-19 response by the Azim Premji Foundation has been increased to Rs 2,125 crore from Rs 1,125 crore, to include in its ambit, vaccination across 10 states, with a commitment to increase this further if the need demands. The objective is to support the public system to vaccinate people across the country at the earliest.
These efforts would include augmentation of the capacity of the public system to vaccinate, demand creation for vaccination through community mobilization, and dealing with vaccine hesitancy. These committed funds are in addition to the financial outlay of the Azim Premji Foundation’s regular operations – which too would continue.
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