India
has the largest postal service in the world - and now it is stepping in
to help deliver lifesaving medicines during a countrywide lockdown
aimed at tackling the coronavirus pandemic. The BBC's Ayeshea Perera in
Delhi reports.
Red postal vans are a familiar
sight in India. They make thousands of journeys every day,
criss-crossing the country's wide network of post offices in 600,000
villages.
The postal service does much more
than deliver letters and packages. It is also a bank, a pension fund
and a primary savings instrument for millions of Indians. Now it will
also be transporting medical equipment and drugs to where they are
needed most, at a time when transport has come to a standstill.
When India went into total
lockdown on 24 March in an attempt to stop the spread of the
coronavirus, all businesses - apart from essential services - were
ordered to shut and people were told to stay home. Given that the
announcement was made barely four hours ahead of the lockdown going into
effect, many industries were left in the lurch - including hospitals,
pharmaceutical companies and labs at the forefront of the fight against
Covid-19.
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| Medical institutes and pharmaceutical companies were caught out by the sudden lockdown |
"We were facing a lot of
difficulties. We usually rely on courier services to send out products
to customers, but none of them were responding, probably because they
didn't have curfew passes or delivery people," Ashok Kumar Madan, the
executive director of the Indian Drug Manufacturer's Association (IDMA),
told the BBC. Many of these products, he added, were essential
medicines such as for heart conditions or cancer.
Then, he got a call from Alok
Ojha, the senior superintendent of the postal service in Uttar Pradesh,
India's most populous state.
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The postal service had already
partnered with the IDMA in the western state of Gujarat to deliver
medicines and equipment as a priority. Mr Ojha was offering to do the
same on a much wider scale.
"We were definitely looking for a solution, and the postal service has unhindered access the country," Mr Madan said.
That is because India Post is
among only a few industries deemed "essential services" and allowed to
operate normally during the lockdown.
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| A number of institutions have used the postal service since the lockdown began |
"We thought we
could help with this as we have a supply chain that is intact. Many
people I spoke to said this would help as it helps keep drugs in the
market and prevents hoarding," Mr Ojha told the BBC.
As word spread, many people began calling and asking for help.
Dr Ujjala Ghoshal, a
microbiologist at the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical
Sciences in the northern city of Lucknow, told the BBC she got in touch
with Mr Ojha when a batch of Covid-19 testing kits she urgently needed
was stuck in the capital Delhi, 550km (340 miles) away.
"The Institute of Medical
Research told us that we would have to send someone to Delhi to collect
the kits because the courier company they usually used was not working,
but there was no way we could do it because of the lockdown," she said.
The postal service, she said,
made an exception and actually went to the institute to pick up the
kits, instead of having them dropped off at a post office. She received
them a day after she made the request.
Many other institutions and
companies have made similar requests. Mr Ojha says ever since the
lockdown began, the postal service has been used to deliver everything
from batches of lifesaving drugs to Covid-19 tests, to N95 masks and
ventilators, moving medicine and equipment between major cities and
states - mostly via the red postal vans.
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| India's red postal vans make tens of thousands of journeys every day |
For longer or very urgent
journeys - such as a consignment of defibrillators that had to be
transported from the state of Tamil Nadu in the south to Uttar Pradesh
in the north - cargo planes are used. Sometimes, the consignments must
be handled with special care - one drug manufacturer who asked for help
said his medicines needed cold chain maintenance, which means they need
to be frozen while transported. And so far, every request made to the
department has been fulfilled.
"We are the best-connected service in India. We are everywhere. And in this case, we knew we could help," Mr Ojha says.
And with the lockdown set to be extended, he anticipates that the service will play a larger role in the weeks ahead.