What Nizammuddin Basti can teach India about fighting covid-19
Towards the end of March, Nizammuddin Basti made national headlines when a six-storeyed white building emerged as one of the country’s biggest coronavirus disease hot spots
New Delhi: In the Khan household in Delhi’s Nizammuddin Basti, 10:30am has attained special significance since India went into lockdown in March. When the WhatsApp notification pings, Sahil, 14, runs down with his mother’s phone to the ground floor, where his father, mother, grandmother and two younger siblings eagerly wait for him. Sahil makes space for himself in the middle and plays the WhatsApp audio message. “To fight corona, wash your hands properly, don’t step out of the house till necessary…,” a female voice announces a series of precautions to be taken to fight coronavirus, in Hinglish. The one-minute audio lesson then flows to the breakfast table for discussion and to two family WhatsApp groups.
The voices belong to sehat aapas, or health sisters, who have been working with the Aga Khan Trust (AKT) for Culture for years to improve the quality of life of their 20,000 neighbours in Nizamuddin Basti, a south Delhi area dominated by the Muslim community. Since the covid-19 outbreak, they’ve doubled down on efforts to spread awareness, promote hygiene, conduct door-to-door surveys and distribute dry rations, masks, soaps, sanitizers and other protective gear.
Towards the end of March, Nizammuddin Basti, which has over 1,200 cheek-by-jowl houses, mostly in narrow lanes, made national headlines when a six-storeyed white building that served as the headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat, an evangelical sect, emerged as one of the country’s biggest coronavirus disease hot spots. Officials estimated that more than a third of the country’s cases at that time were connected to the Tablighi Jamaat. Since then, Nizammuddin Basti has reported just 14 positive cases, including four deaths, shows official data.
The turnaround has been largely due to the residents’ determination to curb the virus by working with volunteers and government authorities to stem the spread. “The residents were very supportive in testing. It’s a densely populated area,” Harleen Kaur, district magistrate, south-east Delhi, says. “With quick action done in a consistent manner, we were able to nip it in the bud,” she says, adding that Nizammuddin Basti is “a success story.”
In March, fear was the predominant emotion in the area. “Most people work in the informal sector and had lost jobs. When the Tablighi incident happened, everyone in the area was scared. It had also become a communal issue,” says Mehrun Nisha, one of the nine sehat aapas. “That’s when we decided to start the WhatsApp radio broadcast.” The daily broadcast, which goes out to 20,000 people, includes information from the World Health Organization website. “We have also started included videos from WHO with Hindi subtitles.”
In the locality, it’s come to be known as “WhatsApp radio”, and the voices of the aapas, who have cultivated deep ties over the years, carry weight in the community. “The broadcast is spoken by women from our basti. We trust them and follow everything they say,” says Sahil’s mother Asma, 45. The aapas’ words help them sift through the flood of misinformation and rumour on social media and elsewhere. “Listening to the WhatsApp radio is the highlight of our day. We sit together and listen; they tell us what we need to know,” says Asma.
When the Tablighi Jamaat news broke out, over 50 women AKT volunteers in April conducted door-to-door surveys, in collaboration with the Delhi government and doctors. “There was a lot of apprehension among people because of stigma, but since sehat aapaas already knew the people, we were able to do the whole exercise in a single day,” says Rajnee Dutta, the resident medical superintendent at the municipal corporation-run polyclinic in the basti, who was part of the survey team.
In a sero-survey done July in the area, 42% people were found to have covid-19 antibodies, though case numbers have been low. “To be honest, I’m at loss of words. It’s a tight-knit community living in small houses. Yes, there’s a possibility that people didn’t report cases because of the stigma but how long can someone stay in their house if their health condition deteriorates? Clearly, increased awareness has been a key to controlling the spread of the virus,” Dutta says.
The past five months have been bittersweet experience for the Khan family. Asma is happy that even though her community has defeated covid-19 they continue to stay vigilant. “We were called ‘superspreaders’; we proved everyone wrong. But still nobody wants to hire my husband (he lost job as an electrician) because we live in Nizammuddin Basti.”
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First Published:17 Aug 2020, 06:16 PM IST
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