With 'Safe Delivery, Safe Life' Vision, This Uttar Pradesh ASHA Worker Has Changed Her Village's Healthcare Scenario
ASHA worker Deepti Pandey has been in the healthcare sector for more than a decade. Her primary focus of work surrounds expectant and new mothers, and nutrition among women and children.
A native of Bahraich village in Uttar Pradesh, Ms. Pandey has been working as an ASHA didi for the last 16 years. Her dedication towards her work bore fruit, and she was promoted to the job of ASHA Sangini in 2013. ASHA Sanginis are a vital cadre for the success of ASHA program of the National Health Mission.
She primarily works towards women's and children's health, family planning, and educating the community about the ailments they are diagnosed with. Besides, she also checks on the vaccination status of families. Ms. Pandey conducts regular surveys and gives her personal attention to any member of the family about all their diseases and health status.
Additionally, she drives her focus on nutrition for pregnant and lactating mothers. She explains to the families how nutrition is needed for a mother and her growing baby's health and that it is a non-negotiable factor. She keeps a check on women's daily habits of eating around 3-4 meals a day, taking their medicines on time, and much more.
Deepti Pandey was also involved in the campaigns, including Sanchari Abhiyan and Dastak Abhiyan in her village, that were scheduled last month. She and other healthcare workers conduct surveys to find people suffering from tuberculosis, cancer, among others, and register them with the government so they can seek the best treatments.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was tasked with informing people about the causes and effects of the deadly virus, as well as the precautions they should take to avoid infection. But it wasn't an easy road for her. It took a significant amount of time for her to convey her message of opting for present-day methods over age-old ones, given the rigidity among the adults in the family. But now, the villagers come to her to seek her guidance on various healthcare matters.
COVID came as an unnecessary add-on to the multiple roles she was already playing. Several ASHA staff members contracted the virus, which made it an arduous task for her and her colleagues, but they took charge and worked efficiently. From quarantining people to arranging medicines, sanitisers, and masks for them, thesewomen handled it all. They would follow up on every patient, visiting them regularly to ensure they were recovering.
NDTV in partnership with Luminous has launched an awareness campaign ‘Be A Bijli Donor’ to promote the idea of ‘save power for more power’. The idea is to conserve energy today in order to get more power tomorrow.
We inherently know that saving energy results in low energy bills, but we also need to understand that a unit of energy saved today makes it available for people still living in the dark or facing regular power cuts.
Saving power or conserving energy is about knowing the sources of energy, and areas of wastage and thereby eliminating these through technology and lifestyle changes. For instance, a 100 W (Watt) incandescent (ICL) bulb can be replaced with a 9 W LED bulb offering similar performance in terms of light output, but at far lower consumption of energy.
While a 100 W ICL bulb, used for four hours a day, consumes 146 units of energy per year, a 9 W LED bulb requires only 13.5 units per year. Clearly, switching to LED is a smart choice as it provides the same output while consuming 90 per cent less energy.
The focus of the campaign is to instill the idea of ‘save power for more power’ and in order to do so, the initiative will create awareness about energy efficient products and services, smart ways to reduce power consumption, alternate sources of energy like solar energy and the need to conserve energy. The idea is to address the rising need for energy conservation in India.
As part of the campaign, we will highlight the stories of individuals and organisations who are championing the cause of energy conservation by switching to renewable sources of energy, adopting innovations to reduce energy consumption while enjoying the same output. The initiative will provide a platform for all stakeholders to share their ideas and work towards the common goal of, ‘Save power for more power’.