Sinha, Amarjeet  <br/><br/>
Asha: Successful public health experiment rooted in village community  

 - IIPA Digest: Building capacity for governance   
 - 4(2), Apr-Jun, 2022: p.10-11 
<br/><br/> The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recognized the contribution of India’s 1 million Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is acknowledged that ASHAs facilitate linking households to health facilities, and play pivotal roles in house-to-house surveys, vaccination, public health and Reproductive and Child Health measures. In many states, ASHAs are involved in national health programmes, and in the response to a range of communicable and non-communicable diseases. They get performance-based payments, not a fixed salary like government servants. There have been agitations demanding employee status for ASHA workers. The idea of performance-based payments was never to pay them a paltry sum — the compensation was expected to be substantial. – Reproduced