ASHA or Accredited Social Health Activist acts as an interface between the community and the Public Health System. An ASHA comes from within the community and hence her understanding and reach amongst the people can rarely be matched. According to estimates each ASHA is responsible for a thousand people.
Being in this position, her role in developing awareness for health services is critical and it is essential that she understands “disability”. From our past interactions with them we learnt that unfortunately, disability and its related issues had not been included in the training imparted to them. This was the reason the Latika Roy Foundation Awareness Campaign proposed a one month internship programme for ASHA to sensitize them towards disability and to get hands on experience of dealing with children with special needs.
Early identification of a disability can be a big step in its effective treatment and an ASHA who is constantly in touch with the community can take this message across to the maximum number of people. The data that they gather can in turn be used as a base for better policies pertaining to health and well being in general and disability in particular.
During the course of the internship they will spend time at “Khushi”, our Satellite Early Intervention Centre and learn the basics in taking care of special children.
No comments:
Post a Comment