Three years on, Oman blood donor group is still growing

Muscat: A group of Good Samaritans, who had formed a WhatsApp group called WeHelp three years ago to coordinate with blood donors in Oman, is slowly but surely expanding.
In addition to their existing charity work, the team members have become busy in visiting hospitals and helping lonely and struggling patients in coordination efforts with embassies.
“We all came together as a team some three years ago. Now, we have started to reach out to lonely and stranded patients in hospitals. We provide them mental support, inform embassies and seek their attention and also sometimes to foot their hospital bills or buy medicines,” Kabeer CV, a WeHelp member, said. Regardless of their nationality, the group, which includes mainly Indian members, lends help to all. Currently, the team is helping a Sri Lankan woman who has been hospitalised with kidney ailments.
“When we came to know about the woman, we visited her, updated her embassy and extended our help. It is not always money, a patient in a hospital needs mental support too. In this case, we are supporting her family too...,’ Joshy P, another WeHelp member, said.
According to the group members, many a time, a patient may need food or some medicines and there would be nobody to buy it for him or her. “We then step in. We either provide home cooked food or buy it. Sometimes, certain medicines may be required on an emergency basis. When medics inform us, we buy it for them,” Saraswathy Manoj, another member of the group, said.
“When cases are revealed through WhatsApp messages, whoever is able to visit the patient he or she does. After collecting the details, we establish a good rapport with the medics and then inform the embassies. From then on, till the patient is discharged, we lend our support,” Asha Rayner, another member of the same group, said.
On an average, the group attends to 10 cases in Muscat itself.