Kauvery Hospital unveils digital campaign on how not to ignore life threatening ailments during the COVID crisis, conceptualized by Vikatan

Chennai: A social message film highlighting the importance of visiting a Doctor even during this crisis for your other ailments is very necessary. Kauvery Hospital is a multi-specialty Indian hospital chain based in Trichy and Hospitals located in Trichy, Chennai, Karaikudi, Hosur and Salem along with The Vikatan Group, decided to do a campaign regarding this.

The film is aimed at Parents living alone, and children either abroad or elsewhere set in the times of the COVID pandemic. The daughter who is a NRI, is advising her mother not to stay alone in her home but to instead move to her friends’ home so she can be safer, yet the mother says she does not step out as everything is home delivered, even as she keeps watching the news of the pandemic getting worse and calls for the elderly to stay home. Suddenly the mother is struggling to breathe, thanks to timely intervention she is quickly admitted to the hospital and she recovers.

The message in the film is Hospitals are the safest place and you need to go for your monthly check-ups.

The Video is available in all the Kauvery Hospitals Social Media channels.

We at Medianews4U spoke to B. Srinivasan, MD The Vikatan Group and Dr. S. Manivannan, MD Kauvery Hospitals.

The idea behind this film during the Covid Crisis? 

Dr. S. Manivannan: We all know that COVID is all around us, but it is not the No. 1 killer in the US. But in India, even today, it is not in top 20 and that is why we decided to do this commercial.

There are other ailments which are causing more deaths, before the wine shops were opened we did not have any accidents, but two days later we had enough deaths due to accidents at least in our hospitals. Patients suffering from other ailments do regular check-ups, but now due to Covid-19 that has dwindled, by the time they decide to visit the hospital it is too late and we are seeing a lot of complications and all deaths are not related to Covid.

We are now neglecting the regular ailments, and they have to understand that the infections are mostly from all the other places one is visiting or from people interactions and not from hospitals. The idea behind the film is the message, please do not neglect your regular ailments. There is also this fear factor as to what is going to happen next, or what will happen to me and this has led to many Cardiac deaths recently. That is when we thought that as Kauvery Hospital we need to send out a message and that is how this campaign happened.

Srinivasan: Ever since the COVID challenge and the lockdown, we have been doing a lot of interactive surveys with our readers and one of the polls that we had conducted was the state of mind of people about visiting hospitals for non- covid related ailments, what are the circumstances under which people would believe that they would want to visit the hospital. There were some startling answers that we got from 82% of our respondents who said they were reluctant to visit a hospital unless there was an absolute emergency, so that was quite an eye opener. We shared this survey with Kauvery Hospitals, I think they were already in a frame of mind where they wanted to have a public outreach and looking to have a messaging in regards to the status of the hospital as they had also come across enough feedback that people were reluctant to visit the hospital because they were not sure how safe their hospitals were.

We told them that this is what we learnt from the survey, they immediately took up the thought process and then they discussed with us saying that there is no sterile environment than you can find in anywhere in your vicinity other than a hospital. There is an impression in the eyes of people that Covid hospitalization and hospitals, and one can get infected in hospitals, they told us that it would be nice to send out a public service message and a brief was given and based on the brief and we came up with the concept where basically we were looking at middle age mothers and their children who are typically NRI or upwardly mobile, they are very connected with their parents, but not in the physical kind of way. They will always know, and they are aware of what is happening in their parents’ life, whether it is emotional or physical. It was those kinds of mothers and children that we were actually addressing saying that if your mother ever feels uncomfortable or your parent is uncomfortable please make sure that they take the right decision and not lead to a complication.

This was the messaging in the commercial, in fact they had suggested some very valuable inputs in terms of the messaging and some of the words but overall I would say that the concept was liked by them and then we went ahead and produced it for them.

The whole process from the survey to producing the commercial took a couple of weeks. It is live on their social media pages and on their digital platform. We wanted to make sure that it reached our audiences, and it reached the right kind of people who would want to take the right decision when it concerns the wellness of their parents.

Why Vikatan platform?

Dr. S. Manivannan: One is there could be a bias because I have been a fan of Vikatan for the last 40 years, I read a lot of stories, novels and so many things and there is authenticity and Vikatan does not sensationalise news. As this message had to be clear and positive we decided to go with Vikatan as it is the most trusted voice in Tamil Nadu. The Vikatan Group has experience in TV media and their online publications are very successful and the trust which people of Tamil Nadu have, are the main reasons we chose Vikatan.