Dhiresh Chowdhury with his team at a patient’s house in Bansdroni, Kolkata. (Photo by Partha Paul)

Eighty-seven years old widow Sabita Banerjee is bed-ridden and lives alone at her two-bedroom flat in Bansdroni area of south Kolkata. Her daughters, who live in Delhi, had hired two domestic helps for her for 12 hours each.

The widow’s one of the domestic helps, Rekha Nayek (48), could not return home in North 24 Parganas district as another help could not turn up on March 23 morning due to lockdown restrictions. Since then, Nayek has been attending Banerjee.

Other senior citizens, who are ailing and living alone in the city, are not as fortunate as Banerjee. Many societies have banned the entry of domestic helps for fear of coronavirus spread. At some places, helps cannot reach senior citizens’ houses because of lack of transportation.

These are not ordinary times. They demand self-less, if not extraordinary, measures to tide over the lockdown blues.

One such gesture is being shown by Dr Dhiresh Chowdhury, a doctor, and his team of 40 people at his geriatrics clinic ‘Banchbo’. They have been not only treating the elderly at their homes but also providing medicines, grocery items, nursing facilities and physiotherapy in south Kolkata.

When Chowdhury visited Banerjee, he was reassuring: “Don’t worry. Whenever you feel, call us. We will come here within half an hour. If necessary, you can call us even for grocery items.” He was accompanied by nurses Khukumani Bhuniya (23), Kunami Hansda (20) and driver Gobinda Gharami (59).

His staff — comprising nurses, on-call doctors and drivers — attends four-five elderly people daily. Before the lockdown, the clinic provided home visits to only its members. But this changed after March 22 — the day of Janata Curfew that was extended by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — and doctors are visiting non-members too.

What inspired Chowdhury was the large number of senior citizens living alone in the city. “Money is not a constraint for many. They value medical help in critical times,” said Chowdhury.

His area of operation is a five-km radius from his clinic in Garia in south Kolkata. “We limited our area to five km because it is easier to give emergency help within the golden hour,” the doctor said.

As his clinic’s number was shared by a patient on social media, Chowdhury and his team have been getting calls from senior citizens who are not members of the clinic. He said he receives 30 calls a day from elderly citizens.

At Chowdhury’s home, his wife Kuhu, 41, is worried. “We have two children and my mother-in-law is above 80 years. So, he has to follow proper social distancing and sanitisation norms every time he is entering our house. But I am worried about his health because he is diabetic.”

The clinic is also helping senior citizens of 45 families from the underprivileged section of the society.

Chowdhury said, “These families are from Patuli police station area. We are giving them ration (rice, dal, potato, onion, salt, mustard oil, soya been and soap) for four weeks.”

If you need medical assistance or grocery items in south Kolkata, call on 9903388556.