London is one of the most severely affected major cities in the world by covid19 infection. Most of the Sri Lankan population lives around the Greater London area. During the early part of the pandemic, many Sri Lankan has died, multiple tragic incidents have occurred in the Tamil community. During the lockdown period, the Sri Lankan population have faced with an increasing number of unsolved medical, psychological, and family related issues because they found it difficult or impossible to contact their GPs or hospital doctors for their needs as NHS was overstretched due to the high volume of the workload from the pandemic. These made the Sri Lankan community into a state of panic and desperation.

Jaffna medical faculty overseas alumni in the UK (JMFOA UK ) is a registered charity for the last five years and all its members are medically qualified Sri Lankan doctors currently working or worked in NHS. It was in a better position to help the desperate Sri Lankan community. JMFOA UK launched a free telephone advisory Tamil helpline service called Nallavaalvu on 12th May 2020 to provide an advisory service on their health-related queries and signpost them to the appropriate services.