Travails of ASHA Workers During COVID-19 Call for Renewed Focus on Public Health
ASHA workers and other community healthcare workers have experienced extra working hours, loss of pay and social apathy during the pandemic.
ASHA workers interacting during a meeting at an urban primary health centre in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Photo: Jignesh Mistry
Health12/Jan/2021
Walking into 2021, if there was one positive to be identified with the large-scale outbreak of a pandemic in 2020 in India, and the rest of the developing world, it would have been this: a primary focus given by most governments and their executive agencies to improve healthcare services and ensure more affordable access of them for large scale populations. This has been done irrespective of the ‘fiscal limitations’ and ‘weak governance systems’ cited earlier as reasons for making healthcare a lesser priority, and an area of investment to be outsourced to the private sector.