VOLUNTEERS ON STRIKE EVEN AS CASES CROSS 2M
As India hit another grim milestone in the coronavirus pandemic yesterday, crossing 2 million cases and more than 42,000 deaths,
community health volunteers went on strike complaining they were illequipped to respond to the wave of infection in rural areas.
Even as India has maintained comparatively low mortality rates, the disease trajectory varies widely across the country with the burden shifting from cities with relatively robust health systems to rural areas. There were 61,455 new cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 2,086,864 while 940 more deaths toik the toll to 42,578, according to worldometers.info.
The health ministry said that recoveries were also growing. India has the third-highest caseload in the world after the United States and Brazil. It has the fifth-most deaths but its fatality rate of about 2 per cent is far lower than the top two hardesthit countries. The rate in the US is 3.3 per cent, and in Brazil 3.4
per cent, Johns Hopkins University figures showed.
The health workers, known as Accredited Social Health Activists, or Asha, which means ‘hope’ in several Indian languages, have been deployed in each village on behalf of the Health Ministry. Their work ranges from escorting children to immunisation clinics to counselling women on childbirth. But while their regular work hasn’t reduced, they are increasingly being involved by state governments in the fight against the pandemic, said Sindhu. “But Asha workers don’t have masks or PPEs or even sanitisers,’’ she said.