Speeches Shim
As a child, Chetna Sharma dreamed of joining the Indian Army. Although that dream didn’t come true, Sharma is still serving her country. As a Community Health Officer (CHO) at a Health and Wellness Centers (HWC) in rural Madhya Pradesh, today she is doing all that she can to prevent and control the COVID-19 pandemic.
These days, Dr. Thanghoi Lam, the State Program Officer for Health and Wellness Centers in Nagaland, a small and remote state in northeastern India, barely leaves his office. The fear and panic surrounding COVID-19 has recently taken hold in Nagaland and Dr. Lam wants to make sure the state is fully equipped to deal with the pandemic.
It’s 2:00 p.m. and Ranita Maibam has just returned from a 10-hour shift caring for people with suspected COVID-19 infections. She has just enough time to tend to her two children, husband, and elderly mother-in-law before she begins her next shift at 9:00 p.m.
Maibam is a Community Health Officer (CHO) at a Health and Wellness Center (HWC) in the northeastern Indian State of Manipur. She is one of thousands of health workers around the country who are working around the clock to contain COVID-19.
The phone lines have been buzzing nonstop and Monica Mishra knows that now is not the time for the water break that she has been wanting to take for the last half an hour. Her ears are red from the headset. But she knows the next caller is more important.
Mishra is one of the tele-counsellors at the “104 Health Helpline” in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The state has a network of tele-counsellors across “104 Helpline,” “108 Emergency Ambulance Helpline” and the “181 Chief Minister’s Helpline,” and currently, the state government requested the tele-counsellors on all three helplines to respond to the emergency situation due to COVID-19.
As reports of the spread of the novel coronavirus began appearing in India, Annie Suchiang had her own fears and apprehensions. She manages the state program for community health workers, known in India as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), and is in charge of the Comprehensive Primary Healthcare (CPHC) Program in the far northeastern state of Meghalaya. One of her primary concerns was building the capacities of frontline health workers to face COVID-19, the new pandemic the world is still grappling to understand.
Comment
Make a general inquiry or suggest an improvement.