Covid Care Network, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) from West Bengal’s Kolkata has launched an online Covid-19 memorial for those Indians who lost their life during the Covid-19 crisis. Led by the team of doctors, the website named National Covid Memorial gives an option to the family and friends of the Covid-19 victims to ‘Submit Memorial’ to the website. The website will be run by social workers with help from journalists, doctors and health workers. More than 1,54,000 people in India died of coronavirus infection.
The homepage of the website has a slideshow of all those who died due to Covid-19. Next to their pictures, their obituaries submitted by their kins have been published. By clicking on the Memorials section of the website, visitors can see photographs of the Covid-19 victim. They can read all the obituaries by clicking on the read more button available below the names of the people. For submitting the memorial, relatives or friends will have to enter the name, gender and other details about the Covid-19 victims. They are also supposed to attach a picture along with the death certificate of the Covid-19 victim.
Dr Abhijit Chowdhury of the NGO said that this initiative is a place for everyone and those who have lost their loved ones due to this pandemic can keep their memories alive, reported BBC.
According to the report, Abhijit also hopes that the memorial will be able to restore the dignity of those who died without their families at the funeral.
As per physician V Mohan, India does not have the tradition of memorials. He said that the affected families will be living with the trauma for decades but the memorial will be the place where people can visit and relive the memories. Mohan is advising the founders of the memorial and believes this could become a national movement.
Speaking about the initiative, director of the Hindu Group of Publications, N Ram said that the memorial has to be inclusive. He said that journalists, volunteers and NGOs would be needed so that tributes can be gathered for the poor and the destitute.
As many as 10,778,206 people were infected with the coronavirus in India and the virus has claimed 154,635 lives in the country. The last rites of the Covid-19 victims were performed in the absence of their family members, in accordance with Covid-19 protocols. In most cases, family members were not allowed to be present at the funeral site.