NNahak
Social Area

Developmental Projects & ICT Models

Nahak contributes to society by turning information and ICT into self-sustaining models that alleviate human suffering — from blood and eye donation to highway rescue.

Social Area · Developmental Projects

ICT & Networking for Human Welfare

At Nahak, we feel the urge to contribute to society by making use of information available through ICT (Internet, Computer & Telephony) and using our knowledge & creative thinking to build self-sustaining models that work for the alleviation of human suffering.

We strongly believe that knowledge — an asset sporadically held across the world — should be collected, collated and disseminated for use in society towards alleviating the suffering of its members. Society has a right to information & knowledge. It can make miracles through ICT & Networking!

Thus, we collect, collate, analyse and utilise knowledge and information, and make it available to the needy through networking and working models & concepts that can be implemented at grass-root level.

We have taken up the social problems of healthcare with a view to alleviate human suffering in a developing country like India. To begin with, we have on hand three community welfare projects, alongside several other ICT-based concepts.

Community Welfare Projects

Three Healthcare Initiatives

Self-sustaining, replicable models that use information and networking to alleviate human suffering — beginning with healthcare in India.

Community Welfare · Healthcare

No More Blood Shortage Globally

Bridging the demand–supply gap in blood through networking and an assurance scheme that turned Gujarat into India’s first surplus-blood state.

Awarded by the Centre of Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad, as one of the innovative social models in a National Search of Innovation, 2005.

Background

India experiences a shortage of blood in almost every state. Blood banking remains largely in private hands where profit is a major motive. To make matters worse, regulations enforced without an understanding of the ground reality created further hurdles. As a result, almost all states face a blood deficit ranging from 20–50% of demand — two state governments had to declare emergency, and one forced its police force to donate blood. This led to malpractices, profiteering, spurious supply, and blood given only on exchange, where a patient’s family must donate for replacement.

Our Experiment

We began an experiment in Gujarat, Western India. We called 30 private blood-bank owners and made them agree to co-operate in their own interest, explaining the real problems of supply & demand. Demand was mainly generated in four metropolitan cities with major hospitals, while blood was collected at various places across the state. Each blood bank had a problem either with demand or supply. We worked out the logistics and a demand–supply system that increased efficient availability — and in turn the “business” of the blood banks.

Networking

All blood banks were asked to co-operate and serve each donor of other blood banks. A donor of “X” blood bank needing blood anywhere in Gujarat received the same facilities as a member of the serving bank — free of charge and without replacement. Networking was elaborately defined and put in place, addressing accounting, blood quality and quality-assurance systems to the satisfaction of every participating member. Networking alone met 25–30% of the shortage, increased donor participation, and made rare blood groups easily available to every patient in the state.

Blood Assurance Scheme

Studying supply & demand patterns, we designed a statistical assurance scheme: if one family member donates blood once a year, the family of four is entitled to two units of blood for every one donated — totally free, with no testing or replacement charges and no replacement donation. Members can receive blood anywhere in the state where networked blood banks operate. The scheme was a grand success: for the first time in India’s blood-banking history, Gujarat generated excess blood and offered it to neighbouring Maharashtra — without government assistance.

Other Objectives

To create a knowledge bank and information warehouse on blood, transfusion and related management — covering blood safety & quality, utilisation, component production & storage, clinical haemotherapy, transfusion practices, regulations & standards, roles & responsibilities, transfusion-transmitted infections, donor selection & recruitment, and co-ordination among blood banks.

Community Welfare · Healthcare

Removal of Corneal Blindness

Adopting the WHO scheme “Vision 2020 — The Right to Vision”, an ICT model to close the gap between cornea demand and supply in India.

Global Context — Vision 2020

WHO estimates 40–45 million people are blind worldwide; nearly 60% reside in Africa, China and India. Despite a half-century of effort, the global burden of blindness is growing with population growth and aging. Without urgent action the burden could double by 2020, with developing countries bearing the brunt. About 80% of global blindness is avoidable through prevention or control.

Indian Context

India has approximately 10 million blind persons; as many as 2.5 million (about 25%) are corneally blind, and more than 1.5 million of them are children aged 1–12 years. A corneally blind person can regain sight instantly if the defective cornea is replaced with a healthy human one — a case of truly rectifiable blindness. Yet despite all medical advances, there is no man-made substitute for human cornea.

The Cornea & the Impediments

The cornea is the transparent front lens covering the eyeball. Damage — from pollution, malnutrition, illness or accidents — causes blindness, primarily among the poorer sections of society. Good corneas can be retrieved after death, the only part of the human body that can be re-used post-mortem. India lacks presumed-consent laws, so efforts must rely on voluntary donation. Four impediments block retrieval: ignorance of the need, religious superstition, family emotion at the time of death, and apathy.

Retrieval Problem

Retrieval must happen within 3–4 hours of death, by qualified medical practitioners, with family consent (even where the donor registered prior consent). Retrieved corneas must reach a processing centre within 6 hours. These constraints demand dynamic logistic management and efficient co-ordination to ensure proper utilisation so that money and effort are not wasted.

What We Can Do

Against an annual demand of roughly 400,000 corneas, India collects only about 14,000. The supply–demand gap widens daily. We are committed to helping eradicate corneal blindness and spreading eye-care awareness through ICT and Networking. Often the shortage is simply a lack of information and linkage between eye banks, hospitals, blind persons and donors. Our premise: available donor corneas are more than adequate to meet demand, provided they are retrieved within hours and people are motivated to donate.

Grassroot & ICT Model

Gujarat has roughly 40,000 villages, many in remote and tribal belts. We tied up with socio-religious voluntary organisations whose volunteers propagate blood- and eye-donation themes in these villages, meeting their travel and incidental expenses with a modest monthly stipend. Our ICT model offers services for increased eye donation, quality transplants and better eye care through a wider network of eye banks, hospitals, donors, volunteers and care centres — ensuring availability of cornea to every blind person, assured quality, and optimal use of resources, alongside a knowledge bank on blindness eradication, eye care, cornea removal/storage/transplantation, regulations, donor awareness and inter-institutional co-ordination.

Proposed Solution

Networking of eye banks and related institutions with a focus on information exchange: mutual co-operation, online registration of donors & recipients, harnessing the Internet’s reach at regional, national and global levels, and co-ordination between donor eyes, eye banks, hospitals, institutions and recipients. An Internet portal would serve as the platform for networking and for building a worldwide knowledge bank and information warehouse.

Community Welfare · Road Safety

Highway Rescue Project

A concept and working model handed to an able agency — saving 3,000 lives and limbs on one of India’s busiest highways.

Background

National Highway No. 8 between Ahmedabad and Bombay, passing through Gujarat, is one of the country’s busiest roads — 263 kilometres that rank alongside the Bombay–Pune, Delhi–Chandigarh and Calcutta–Haldia stretches in traffic volume. For most of its distance it is just two lanes and very curvaceous, two factors that drive a high number of accidents. The Government of Gujarat dealt with more than 100 accidents per month on this stretch, yet despite everyone’s best efforts fatality among victims did not reduce as expected.

Guiding Principles

We stepped in with a difference, identifying the bottlenecks in reaching medical care to victims. The guiding principles were the Golden Hour — adequate medical aid within the first hour can improve survival chances by 80% per UK Acute Trauma Life Support guidelines; Networking — building awareness among hospitals along the highway of a network offering immediate care with simplified admission; and a Co-ordinated Approach — aligning the existing state highway police, government machinery and ambulance providers. After two years of deliberations, permission from the National Highway Authority was secured.

Infrastructure & Working Pattern

Rescue cabins were installed every 50 kilometres along the 265 km stretch, each staffed round the clock with a medical van and first-aid kit. Five traffic-aid posts run by the State Highway Police are equipped with two jeeps, one crane, a wireless set and an emergency vehicle, manned by five police personnel and a driver. A control room at Baroda — the centre of the area of operation — can reach any ambulance provider, police control, traffic-aid post or network hospital, with a round-the-clock telephone helpline.

Methodology

The communication and pick-up chain runs: Accident Site calls the Control Room, which informs the nearest Rescue Station; the ambulance & team are immediately sent to pick up the patient and deliver them to the nearest hospital.

Creating Awareness

The last and most crucial link was awareness among local communities along the highway. Educational programs were run with community leaders and village “sarpanch”; a poster campaign at every phone booth, petrol pump and eatery; metallic sign-posts every 5 km on both sides; stickers inside buses and on four-wheelers travelling the highway; and brochures.

Further ICT Concepts

More Self-Sustaining Models

Beyond healthcare, Nahak has devised ICT and networking models that create employment and opportunity at no or low cost.

Save Petrol

A concept paper based on Europe’s “Shared Taxi Model” to address traffic problems in Indian cities, with the following benefits:

  • Increased revenue to taxi / auto-rickshaw drivers
  • Low tariff for the public
  • Point-to-point service
  • Services available round the clock at any destination
  • Low pollution due to shared services
  • Multiplier effect to the economy (like telecom)

Barter Bank for Jobs Generation

A concept that utilises available resources effectively — (a) the idle time available with the unemployed, and (b) perpetual or vexed problems of society such as dead inventories. We propose using idle time of the unemployed to solve the dead-inventory problem, designed around local conditions and using a global demand/supply platform like eBay.

No More Hunger

As per Indian tradition, on auspicious days people treat the poor by giving food. The concept proposes a database of demand (those who need free food) and supply (those willing to give), managed and organised through a portal that monitors and co-ordinates the two.

We have also developed interesting ICT models for Railways, Public Hospitals and Old Age Homes that generate employment and create opportunities at no or low cost.

All these ICT-based projects are self-sustainable, replicable, networking-oriented and economically viable, with no or low cost. We have taken our models — involving multiple stakeholders — to the world community through presentations and paper submissions at various international platforms. We are open to co-operation with any government institution, organisation or NGO for implementing these projects anywhere in the world, on a not-for-profit basis. Likewise, we can devise similar ICT and Networking models to address and solve different problems of human suffering.

International Platforms

Taking Our Models to the World

Nahak has presented its developmental projects and research at major international forums — from the ISBT in Paris to the UNO’s World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva.

  1. International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT)

    Paris · July 15–18, 2001

    We presented our research for the cause of blood and its results at the VII European Congress of the International Society for Blood Transfusion in Paris. The paper, titled “No More Blood Shortage Globally”, received international accolades. The World Bank expressed interest in participating and investing in the project, and we received appreciation and encouragement from the WHO. (Ref: Transfusion Clinique Et Biologique, Abstract Book of ISBT, VII European Congress, Paris, July 15–18, 2001, Vol. 8 – Suppl. 1, Page 23s, paragraph S12-004, “How to Bridge Blood Shortage Globally”, by Shukla J.C, Shukla A, Nahak Overseas Limited.)

  2. Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP)

    South Asia Regional Network Meeting · Dhaka, Bangladesh · September 14–17, 2002

    Nahak participated in the South Asia Regional Network Meeting of the Global Knowledge Partnership in Dhaka, contributing to the regional dialogue on ICT for development.

  3. Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) Annual Meeting

    Rome, Italy · May 21–23, 2003

    Nahak attended the GKP Annual Meeting in Rome, engaging with the global partnership on knowledge and ICT-led development.

  4. World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) — PrepCom 3

    Geneva, Switzerland · September 15–27, 2003

    Nahak took part in the third meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva.

  5. WSIS & ICT4D Platform

    Geneva · December 9–13, 2003

    Nahak was selected as “one of the best ICT companies” and was showcased at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, presenting its developmental projects on the ICT4D Platform.