An overview to the actions being taken by Facebook to help India in tackling the new wave of Covid-19

The social media giant, Facebook has announced this week that it will be taking three steps aimed to help India to cope up with its rising number of Covid-19 cases . These new initiatives starts with a $10 million addition as an emergency respond fund as announced by Mark Zuckerberg the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook. Earlier this week he said that he is thinking about everyone in India and hoping that the virus gets under control soon. Currently Facebook is working with United Nation Children’s Fund simply known as UNICEF to guide people that when they should be going to the hospital and will be giving out $10 million for efforts in emergency response.

These $10 million will not be given directly to someone but instead they will be spent through different partnering organizations such as the United Way, Swasth, I am Gurgaon, Hemkunt Foundation, US India strategic partnership forum short for USISPF and project Mumbai. These organizations will be used for supplying critical medical supplies including up to 5000 oxygen concentrators, BiPAP machines, ventilators and increased number of bed capacity in hospitals.

Not only this, but the social media giant will also be forming a partnership with the Government of India so they can run a Vaccine Founder tool on the platform provided by Facebook from this week. This service will be made available in 17 different languages so it can help the users to navigate their way to the nearest vaccine centers. This tool will be loaded with center location as well as their working hours that will be provided by the Government’s Ministry of Heath and Family Welfare. A walk in option will be generated for those who are 46 years old and above along with a link so they can register themselves on the CoWin website to book their appointment for vaccine. This tool will be accessible through the Covid-19 information center, as cleared by the company in there post.

Moving forward, Facebook will also be teaming up with other UN agencies and Supporting NGOS that are active in India by giving them advertisement credits as well as an insight to Facebook. This will enable these parties to spread information via advertisements on Facebook without spending money. And lastly, the information centers for Covid-19 available on this platform will also hold some basic instructions released by UNICEF India to guide people incase of an emergency for treating a Covid positive person at home. This set of instructions will be kept more prominent and easily accessible on the information center. Not just Facebook, but even on other apps owned by Facebook including Instagram will be used to promote information through guides in explore section.

While Facebook is playing its role to help out India, on the other hand it also came under fire for removing posts that were related to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his response on current situation. The hashtag saying #ResginModi has been temporarily blocked by the company and before restoring it, the company cleared that it was done by mistake.



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