Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on the Accredited Social Health Activists: An Exploratory Study in Rangareddy District of Telangana, India

Abstract

The whole world is immensely dealing with the COVID-19 which was originated from the Wuhan city in the end of 2019. All the countries have been in a devastating state by the sudden outbreak which led to many deaths from the deadly infection. Many low- and middle-income countries are being suffering due to the poor healthcare infrastructure and a smaller number of healthcare workers. India is one of them. Due to the insufficient number of healthcare workers, the workload on the existing numbers has increased to a double-fold, especially on the grass-root workers. Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), an initiative of the National Rural Health Mission in India is involved in the implementation of the primary health care facility at the grassroot level. The effective implementation of the health care policy depends on the performance of the ASHA workers. The present study aims to identify the challenges and barriers faced by the ASHA workers while delivering their services during the pandemic times and provide policy suggestions for strengthening of the grass-root level health care workers for facing any kind of future health emergencies.