First line of defence: At Hisar, Asha workers keep a hawk eye on each house

Haryana has over 20,000 Asha workers for around 7,000 villages apart from urban areas.

Asha workers at a healthcare centre in Hisar, Haryana. (Express)

“IT TAKES less than 30 minutes for us to come to know if anybody from another state or country enters any village here because our Asha workers immediately inform us about the same,” says Jagat Bisla, district Asha coordinator, Hisar.

Asha workers are community health workers engaged under the National Health Mission (NHM). “They have contacts in each house in the villages and urban areas concerned as they start visiting families soon after any marriage takes place there. They start contacting newly-married couples, giving them suggestions about family planning, and they guide them about immunisation after and before delivery,”
adds Bisla.

Now, in the times of COVID-19, their reach is proving to be a major advantage for health authorities. The state has over 20,000 Asha workers for around 7,000 villages apart from urban areas. One Asha worker is engaged for population of nearly 1,000. “Each house is required to be visited by Asha at least three times in a month continuously for three months and to provide the information to health officials,” NHM’s Haryana Managing Director Prabhjot Singh told The Indian Express on Thursday.

“They are our first line of defense to halt the spread of coronavirus. They are the link between the public and health officials,” said Dr Jitender Kumar, senior medical officer (SMO), Tosham (Bhiwani).

To collect data about each family, Asha workers visit from 10 to 25 houses a day. If anybody is found suffering from fever, dry cough, sore throat and runny nose, health officials are immediately informed.

The risks

Among the challenges is the task of convincing people to home-quarantine. Those who have reached their villages from other states or countries in March have been quarantined as a precautionary measure.

“Asha workers were harassed on Wednesday when they had gone for a door-to-door survey at a village in Nuh. We have urged the authorities to depute male health workers with Asha workers,” said Parvesh Kumari, president, Asha Workers Union, Haryana.

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“The authorities must ensure masks and sanitisers for Asha workers as we have reports that many of them have not been provided the same yet,” added Kumari.

Another Asha worker said, “In these testing times, we are travelling on foot for door-to-door surveys to identify COVID-19 cases.”

Education up till class VIII is the minimum educational qualification for an Asha worker. They get Rs 4,000 as fixed allowance apart from incentives for special tasks like Rs 300 for each delivery conducted in government hospitals after persuading a couple for the same. “The central government has approved an additional monthly incentive of Rs 1,000 to conduct COVID-19 activities in the field from April to May,” said Prabhjot Singh.

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