THE EFFORT OF COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS IN COVID-19 PANDEMIC SITUATION: GUMLA

Counselling of clients at CHC by Sahiya-Sathi

Health is one among the important components of Human Development. Several factors affect the health and wellbeing of the population.  Starting from knowledge/ level of awareness of people to availability of technical hands, instruments and equipment’s to provide clinical services.   The health care sector has undergone several development phases and ably invents new medicines, vaccines, investigation technologies and overall huge knowledge base to combat different kind of diseases or illness. On the contrary the nature, biodiversity or food chains are regularly harassed directly or indirectly by the human beings for their own profit.  This not only adds more & more numbers to the existing disease list but also creates favorable environment for occurrence & existence of new pathogenic organisms/ micro-organisms. The world is experience existence of new pathogenic organisms and creating serious public health concerns affecting the lives & livings of the people in every 2-3 years. All the pathogenic organisms are mainly categorized in to 05 major types: Virus, Bacterial, Fungi, Protozoa and Worms. Among all the 05, one that has high epidemic ability is the virus. Since early 1990s (i.e from yellow fever virus) to 21^st century the world has seen the appearance of a number of virus and its impact on human civilization. Among all, the important thing is most of these virus (except few like polio) confined to a specific geographic location and typically found in countries developing or under developed countries. But the corona virus has created a pandemic situation spreading over 200 countries over the world within a span of 03-04 Months.  Till 06^th April 2020 the virus has infected 12, 72,862 people and claimed life of 71,409 people all over the world.  Currently India is in the 27^th position with a total of 4289 cases and 61 deaths. 

IEC Materials for awareness generation

Different countries have taken different initiatives to combat the situation and reduce the death toll. One of the widely accepted strategies to break the chain & prohibit the community level spread is the lock down & social distancing. Most of the countries accepted this including India. Although the strategy has quite effective in checking the epidemic situation but have a sever effect on the economy. Gumla is one among the 24 districts of Jharkhand with a population of more than 10 lakhs contributing 3.1% of the total population of the state. More than 71% of the population of the district is belonging to schedule categories (tribes and casts).   In addition a majority of the workforce i.e 72% are casual laborers. In the current situation of lock down these are the population suffered a lot. No doubt the district administration has taken several steps to ensure food security and wellbeing of the population.  This starts from home delivery of PDS materials to distribution of hot cooked meals to the needy in within the district. This apart, establishment of Block and Panchayat level quarantine centers has been undertaken for intra as well as interstate migrate population.  Several CSOs (Civil Society Organization) and Trade Unions comes forward to complement the Govt. initiatives by undertaking response activities during this COVID-19 pandemic. Although positives cases were identified in the nearby districts, it has ably managed to restrict the infection at zero level.

at the situation and reduce the death toll. One of the widely accepted strategies to break the chain & prohibit the community level spread is the lock down & social distancing.

Home Visit for counseling and folow up

During this pandemic situation while the people are instructed to reside in their houses the role played by the Health care service providers including the grassroots level workers like the Sahiyas(ASHA)/ AWW/ANMs are quite remarkable.  They are engaged in generating awareness, follow up of the home quarantine cases, coordinate with the line administration for referral of suspected ones and also on distribution of food items to the beneficiaries within the community. Most of the organized sectors declared “work from home” approach; these workers are working restlessly putting their lives in danger.