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Philippines To Adopt 'Dharavi Model' To Contain Spread Of COVID-19 In Slums: BMC Chief
Writer: Navya Singh
Navya writes and speaks about matters that often do not come out or doesn’t see daylight. Defense and economy of the country is of special interest to her and a lot of her content revolves around that.
India, 19 Aug 2020 9:21 AM GMT | Updated 19 Aug 2020 10:33 AM GMT
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The Dharavi model of containing the spread of Coronavirus constitutes testing in high numbers, shifting positive patients to institutional quarantine facilities, moving high and low risk contacts to separate quarantine facilities, and timely treatment of patients.
The Philippines government has decided to adopt the Dharavi model of containing the outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 in its densely populated slums.
BMC commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said on August 18, "The Philippines government will be following the Dharavi model for containing Covid-19 in densely populated slums of Philippines."
BMC has shared the details of the Dharavi's 'Chase the virus' model with the Philippine government's health department, Chahal said.
"The DOH declared that it would follow the successful Dharavi-Mumbai campaign conceptualised by Assistant Municipal Commissioner Kiran Dighavkar. Dharavi in India is Asia's largest slum where the Hollywood movie "Slumdog Millionaire" was shot. It has a total population of 1 million within a 2.5-square-kilometer area. This means eight to 10 people in a 9-square-meter area," a news report from Philippine Daily Inquirer shared by the BMC Commissioner read.
The Dharavi Model
The Dharavi model of containing the spread of Coronavirus constitutes testing in high numbers, shifting positive patients to institutional quarantine facilities, moving high and low risk contacts to separate quarantine facilities, and timely treatment of patients.
BMC set up fever camps, door-to-door surveys, used private clinics and dispensaries to detect Covid-19 early.
Assistant Municipal Commissioner Kiran Dighavkar said, "We are giving the Philippines government information on how we conducted fever camps in Dharavi, and carried out contact tracing, and organised institutional quarantining." Over the past few weeks, Dighavkar has been flooded with calls from municipal corporations in cities of Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kolhapur, for similar information.
"BMC's Chase the Virus Policy has shown the world the way to fight Covid-19, but BMC is not complacent. We will not lower our guard," BMC Commissioner said.
Impact Of The Model
Dharavi, once a Coronavirus hotspot, has seen cases in single digits for the past few days, and effectively flattened the curve in the end of June.
On August 17, Monday, Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, recorded four new cases, on Saturday and Sunday it had recorded five new cases each, on Friday, it had recorded nine new cases.
These figures stand in stark contrast with the number of cases that were reported in a single day in May, when the infections in Dharavi peaked. On May 3, it recorded its single-day spike of 94 cases.
While the total number of Covid-19 cases in Dharavi touched 2,672, it has 80 active cases currently. The doubling rate has slowed down to 269 days, and growth rate is 0.27%, in contrast with May when the it was at its peak at 4.8%.
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