Sana Shakil By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Joining their husbands in the fight against coronavirus pandemic, the wives of CRPF personnel have come together in an initiative to produce Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits and masks for health care staff.

At all the 46 battalion group centres of CRPF, the wives of the paramilitary personnel have been working on war-footing to make PPE kits, sanitisers and face masks for the medical staff, said CRPF DIG Mosses Dinakaran.

Hundreds of PPE kits, masks, aprons, gloves have already been produced and supplied to hospitals by the women who have been working tirelessly for about a fortnight, The New Indian Express has learnt.

The women engaged in the task said dedicated teams have been constituted in several parts of the country and many more are willing to join the mission.

The work is being done under the aegis of Family Welfare Associations of CRPF. On March 28, the force’s Director General AP Maheshwari had urged all its personnel to provide all resources to agencies in their respective areas and extend a helping hand in combating the pandemic.

The volunteer force has also been coordinating with the local farmers to ensure that products such as vegetables, fruits, and milk are being purchased directly from them at suitable rates.

Dr Abha Saxena, head of Regional CRPF Family Welfare Association at Bengaluru said that the Bangalore Group Centre has supplied 200 masks and 100 PPE kits in the last 10 days to nearby hospitals.

“Sterilized masks, aprons, gloves, caps, gowns and bags are being prepared by our women and tailoring workers after getting some basic training by the hospitals and following the required protocol,” said Dr Saxena. She added that the volunteer force has also been using the mess facilities to provide food to vulnerable people.

It was on March 26 that Saxena took on the task to distribute food door-to-door to avoid people coming out of their homes. The major challenge was not having enough bags to distribute the food and rations. Saxena and other CRPF wives made the bags and solved the issue.



This motivated Dr Saxena and her team to take up bigger challenges. They got in touch with local NGOs and got to know about medics facing shortage of PPE kits and masks. “We got to know that the doctors at NIMHANS were in urgent need of PPE kits and face masks. They had the necessary material to make them and wanted some people to put it all together. And we decided to extend a helping hand, ” Dr Saxena said.

Her team sent two tailors to get trained by the staff at the hospitals. The team returned and passed on the skills to a group of 20 volunteers at the Bangaluru camp.