Bihar: NDRF busy creating awareness on Covid-19

PATNA: The 9th battalion personnel of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), deployed in several districts to help the local administration in its fight against coronavirus, are busy conducting awareness programme at quarantine centres about the necessity for migrant workers to stay there for at least 14 days instead of directly going home.
NDRF 9th battalion commandant Vijay Sinha said the migrant workers returning from other states were being made aware about the risk and health problems their families might face if they are allowed to go home instead of staying quarantined.
“These migrant workers are being told how to maintain hygiene by washing hands to contain Covid-19 spread. They are also being told about using mask and its benefits in the present situation,” he said.
Sinha said all these awareness programmes are being run on the directions of state disaster management department and the district administration concerned where NDRF teams are deployed for area sanitization, supporting authorities in handling migrant workers and transporting any Covid suspect to hospital.
Sinha said NDRF had started conducting awareness programmes on Covid-19 in schools and public places in Patna and other districts from March 5. “We organized several such awareness programmes in government and private schools in Patna and other districts, dry port at Bihta, Patna and Gaya airports and later in quarantine centres. NDRF also conducted training for doctors, police and paramedics in state to prepare them for Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
Sinha said words like quarantine and isolation might be new for many, but not for the NDRF men. “Those who had participated in the mock drill at Patna airport last year on handling chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) crisis were also made aware of these concepts that time. The Airports Authority of India staff and Central Industrial Security Force personnel, city doctors, airline employees, firefighters and district administration people were imparted training in handling a person infected with any kind of pandemic and the steps required for isolating and quarantining such people.
An NDRF officer, preferring anonymity, said the Patna airport drill was monitored by National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), which is a laboratory of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). “Their authorities had stayed in Patna for five days to overlook the training-cum-mock drill operations at the airport,” he said.