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A textile trader from Mumbai started educating and disseminating information about the availability of COVID-19 drugs to the residents of Thane which has now crossed boundaries to SOS calls from many in Kolkata.
Deep Shah receives hundreds of calls every day, many of them are reportedly from Kolkata seeking help to procure medicines for coronavirus patients.
On being through a situation where he could not get medicines for COVID-19 for his friend's aunt propelled him to open a channel for communication, understanding the significance of the timeliness of the drugs for the person fighting the battle against the deadly virus.
"I was hunting for a medicine for my friend's aunt and did not know any chemist or druggist at that time. Doctors had prescribed Remdesivir and it wasn't available in any nearby pharmacy. As I desperately looked for the medicine, I wished I could turn to someone for guidance," Shah told Times of India.
"I composed a message on WhatsApp and urged people to contact me in case they were looking for medicines for people contracting the novel coronavirus," he added.
According to reports, in a matter of a few days, he started getting calls from people in Thane, asking for numbers and addresses of medicine distributors. Then calls seeking help started pouring in from other parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
"When I got a call from Bengal, I was surprised. But I decided to help anyway," he said. He now gets as many as 80 calls from Bengal every day.
