Interview Times Matilda, appointed as an Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) for Gargadbahal town in Baragaon tehsil of Odisha’s Sundargarh district 15 years back did not have it easy when she has begun her work.
“People did not think of going to the hospital when they fell sick. When I used to advise people to go to the hospital, they used to ridicule me. I also had to bear the brunt of casteism,” she said. “It took years of work before I could make people understand the need to visit doctors instead of rushing to the local witch doctor.”
As one of the 47000-odd ASHA laborers in Odisha, Matilda’s hands have continuously been full with her day by day workload comprising door-to-door to check immunization of new-borns as well as juvenile young ladies, ante-natal check-up, post-natal check-up, counseling of women on birth preparedness, breastfeeding, and complementary feeding, and prevention of common infections counting reproductive tract infection and sexually transmitted disease.
She gets up and begins her day at 5 in the morning, as she surges to finish her household chores – cooks food for the family of four, feeding the cattle – before hopping onto her cycle for door-to-door visits. When the apocalypse knocked past year, Matilda’s schedule became more hectic as she got busy visiting 50-60 households every day to check on people suspected of having Covid-19 symptoms.
“Every day I would get out of home and visit families looking for Covid suspects and then inform the local primary health centre. People were scared of being taken for tests as there was a lot of stigmas attached to a Covid patient last year,” said Matilda.
Though her job entailed meeting people at their homes, a majority of ASHAs were not provided with personal protective equipment (PPE), or masks, gloves, and sanitizers. After the first wave ebbed and vaccination started, Matilda said she had a tough time convincing villagers to get vaccinated.
“As I have been working with people in my village for a long time, they listened to me and got vaccinated,” said Matilda, who rues that despite all the hard work she puts in, the remuneration is a measly ₹4500. “During the pandemic, the state government had given a one-time incentive of ₹2000 but now that has been withdrawn and we just get ₹4500.”
