Jagran New Media’s Health and lifestyle portal, Onlymyhealth.com organized the first edition of The HealthCare Heroes Awards on October 8th, 2020 with an aim to recognise and honour individuals and institutions that have been on the frontlines of fighting the pandemic in the country.
As the outbreak of Covid-19 engulfed the entire nation in anxiety and fear, positive stories of resilient people and organizations who are fighting the pandemic needed to make headlines. The HealthCare Heroes awards was an attempt by Onlymyhealth.com in the direction to salute these ‘Corona-Warriors’.
A separate microsite was created with all the details for this initiative https://www.onlymyhealth.com/events/healthcare-heroes-awards and the voting ended on Oct 6th. The results were announced yesterday through a virtual ceremony which was attended by leaders and newsmakers of the country. A special message by Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Dr Harsh Vardhan and Bollywood celebrity, Sonu Sood took the momentum of the event few notches higher.
Bharat Gupta, CEO, Jagran New Media expressed his gratitude for all the heroes for their dedicated work.
There were 4 main categories: ‘Breakthrough Innovations’, ‘Beyond the call of duty’, ‘Covid Heroes’, ‘Awareness Warriors’ which were further divided into 3 sub categories. Breakthrough Innovations which looked at top nominations in Technology, Testing and Patient Care was won by ‘Save Life Foundation’ in Technology, ‘Molbio Diagnostics’ in Testing, ‘InnAccel’ in Patient Care.
The category ‘Beyond the Call of Duty’ focused on Doctors, Paramedics & Frontline warriors and the winner in this category are ‘Dr. Susheel Bindroo, Sister Nayana Vartak (Paramedics), Mr. Vangala Ramakrishna (Frontline Warriors).
Under ‘Covid Heroes’, Rural HealthCare, Youth Icons & Unsung Heroes were celebrated and the winners in this category are Sukhibhava Foundation (Rural HealthCare), Dr Binish Desai (Youth Icons), Team – Khaana Chahiye (Unsung Heroes)
In the ‘Awareness Warriors’ category, nominations were under the subcategories of Best Out of the Box idea, Most Impact and Hoax Busters. The winners of this category are puppet characters Tara & Appa created by The Puppetarians & Unicef UP (Best Out Of The Box Idea), Dr. Joelene Fernandes and Dr. Jorson Fernandes (Most Impact), Coronavirologist Pavithra Venkatagopalan (Hoax Busters).
The special Editors’ choice awards went to actor & humanitarian Sonu Sood, India’s first plasma donor Smriti Thakkar and ‘Cycle Girl’ Jyoti Paswan.
The winner in each sub category were chosen by a special jury with esteemed names like Prof Ramanan Laxminarayanan (Director, Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in Washington, D.C.) Prof Priya Abraham ( Director, ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune), Dr Naresh Trehan (MD, Medanta the Medicity, Gurugram), Dr TS Kler ( Chairman, PSRI Heart Institute), Dr KK Aggarwal ( Former President of IMA), Dr Sandeep Nayar (Chest & Respiratory Disease Specialist) Swati Bathwal (Public Health Nutritionist) and Megha Mamgain ( Head, Health & Lifestyle at Jagran New Media). Public votes had a 25% impact on choosing the winners.
The event was sponsored by Sanat – Schwabe India as Category Sponsor and supported by Naturamore, Cipla and Mahindra XP Plus, with Wet & Dry as Gifting Partner.