Sixty-year-old Madhubala has been working as an accredited social health activist for 12 years in Delhi. But never before has her work made...
Sixty-year-old Madhubala has been working as an accredited social health activist for 12 years in Delhi. But never before has her work made her more vulnerable. Like the 6,000-odd community health workers in the city, she has been conducting door-to-door surveys since March to identify residents with symptoms of the coronavirus disease.
Delhi has recorded more than 1,50,000 cases of Covid-19 and more than 4,000 people have died.
Madhubala, who works in Ranaji Enclave in West Delhi’s Najafgarh, said she did not get any protective gear from the government in the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak. It was only in the last week of June that fresh masks were supplied regularly, but that did not include gloves or a hand sanitiser.
“If we have to put a [quarantine] stamp then we have to hold the patient’s hand. What if we get infected?” she asked.
More than 150 ASHA workers have tested positive for Covid-19 in the city, said Usha Thakur, the general secretary of Delhi Asha Workers’ Association. “For most of them, it was their families that took care of them or the union arranged for support,” she said. No government benefits were available to them, she said, even though they were “going into hotspots...
