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In Thailand, Aerospace Engineers Turn Their Skills to COVID-19

Zsombor Peter

   BANGKOK - InThailand,a team of aerospace engineersisusing the high-tech
   skills they honed programming planes and satellites to run a simple but
   effective mapping website helping everyday volunteers reach those with
   COVID-19who arefalling through the cracks of a struggling public health
   caresystem.

   Since going live in mid-July,[1]jitasa.carehas seen well over 10,000
   households sign on,seekingassistanceforeverythingfrom food to
   oxygentoan urgent ride to the hospital,most ofthem in the capital,
   Bangkok. Aboutthe same number ofvolunteers havesignedupto help them.

   "Jitasa" ties together the Thai words for "mind" and "volunteer."

   "In Thai it means '¦ people who want to volunteer to dogood deeds,"
   saidWasanchaiVongsantivanich, one of the lead developers.

   Hewassurprised by how quickly the sitetookoff. It got a big boost after
   someone shared the link with a popular local Facebook influencer who
   passed it on to his millions of followers.

   "When it went widespread, people started to make use of this and a lot
   of volunteers subscribed by themselves [to] help each other, and that
   was fantastic and a wonderful thing that we see from the
   platform,"Wasanchaisaid.

   Theengineers'efforts are part of an outpouring of help from Thais of
   all stripeswho arevolunteering their time and singular skills to take
   some of the load offthepublic health care system.The medical services
   arestrained bythe worst wave of infections to hit the country since the
   pandemic began.

   Every day brings tens of thousands of new cases and hundreds of more
   deaths. Intensive care units in Bangkok are filling up, forcing some
   Thais to spend days hunting for a free hospital bed and the worst off
   to die at home before they find one.

   'People helping people'

   Volunteers have played a vital role inmeetingsome of the shortfalls,
   saidPichitSiriwan, deputy director of relief and community health at
   the Thai Red Cross Society.

   "They're nowvery important. We need the volunteers' help fighting
   against COVID-19 in Bangkok because of the rise in infections. Now the
   daily infection in the country isalmost 20,000cases...andalmost halfof
   them are in Bangkok," he said, leaving hospitals in and around the city
   "overwhelmed."

   Pichitsaid the Thai Red Cross Society relies on thousands of volunteers
   itself, and that some of them have been usingjitasa.careto find people
   with COVID-19 in need.

   Wasanchaisaid the idea for site started with abacklogat crematoria
   burning the bodies of the newly dead, as per Buddhist tradition. A
   local volunteer group asked him and his colleagues to brainstorm ways
   to help families find available time slots.

   By early July,so many people were dying of COVID-19 in the greater
   Bangkok area that the Buddhist temples with crematoria equipped to
   handle infected bodies safely were struggling to keep up. A colleague
   of Wasanchai's who had just lost his grandmother to the virus had to
   call 19 temples before finding one that could take her.

   Oncetheteamcame up withthe idea of an interactive map of Thailand
   drawing on crowdsourced data to show people which temples had
   sparecapacity, it was an easily leap to add community isolation centers
   with free beds, shops ready to fill oxygen tanks and more.

   Just as helpful is the site'sabilitytoquicklyconnectthe sickwithpeople
   who want to help others.Anyone suffering from COVID-19 can sign in with
   a phone number, pin their location to the map, and post a note
   explaining their symptoms and what they need. Anyone who wants to help
   cansignonwith their own phone number and contact them directly.

   Those asking forassistanceshow up on the map as a bright red circle
   that grows bigger thelongerthey'vebeen waiting. Their circle turns
   green when theystartgetting help,goes togray once their needs have been
   met, then vanishes after a few days.

   "Everyone can see the map, and they see their community and the area
   around them. Anyone around them who needs help, they just volunteer. If
   they think they can help [those] people, that household, they just
   contact and help,"Wasanchaisaid. "That is the simple idea -- people
   helping people."

   Turning red to green

   SonskulnThaomohr, who handles company registration records for the
   Commerce Ministry by day, has taken tojitasa.carewitha passion.

   Since coming across the site last month, he says he has responded to
   dozens of posts asking for help -- taking blood oxygen level readings,
   dropping off food bundles to those self-isolating or helping seniors
   tap into public services by guiding them through online registration
   forms. Lately he has seenan increase inpostsrequestinganti-viral
   medicine.

   "If I could do something to help the situation, I really want to do
   it," saidSonskuln, whose close friend lost his mother to COVID-19 and
   blamed himself for having accidentally passed the virus on to her.

   "I'm so sad for him, and that affects me personally because I don't
   want any other of my friends or others to tell the sad story and blame
   themselves like that again," he said.

   Sonskulnlikes that the site also lets volunteers communicate with one
   another and coordinate their efforts. But eventhen,they can sometimes
   be too late.

   "We call it super red, which is the triage level," he said. "That means
   they are in emergency state [and] need paramedic attention and '¦
   transfer to hospital ASAP. Those people are waiting inside their house
   and, to be honest, they are not ingood shapeat all. We have seen people
   dying -- me too -- laying on the floor."

   With other volunteer groups and even some government agencies signing
   in tojitasa.careto respond to posts for help,Wasanchaisaid, most of
   Bangkok's red circles are turning green. Most of those on the site
   still waiting for help are now to the south and southeast of the
   capital.

   After climbing steadily for more than four months, new daily infection
   numbers for the country have also started to level off and dip a bit in
   the past two weeks, convincing the government to start easing lockdown
   rules that have crippled the economy.

   ButPichit, atThai Red Cross Society, warned that the latest trend could
   be an artifact of less testing and said infection numbers were still
   rising in some provinces in the south and northeast of Thailand, so
   that health care professionals and volunteers alike would have to stay
   vigilant.

   "The more you test,the more you find, so we still need to be aware that
   this decrease in number may be due to decreased tests," he said. "So,we
   should keep an eye on it."

References

   1. https://jitasa.care/

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