ABSTRACT
Background: ASHA is a health activist in the communities who creates awareness on health and its social determinants and mobilizes the community towards local health planning and increased utilization and accountability of the existing health services. This study was conducted with the aim of evaluating the work performance of ASHAs in tribal and remote rural areas in Kurnool division of Kurnool district.Methods: This is a community based observational and cross sectional study carried out from July 2014 to July 2015. Six PHCs of Atmakur CHNC namely Kottalcheruvu, Bairluty, Kothapally, Yerramattam, Gokavaram, Pamulapadu were selected for the study by using multistage random sampling technique. 65 ASHAs from 20 SCs of these six PHCs had participated in the study for evaluation of their performance in the field.Results: Majority of ASHAs had average level of the performance in counselling of antenatal cases, escorting postnatal cases, motivating cases for family planning adoption, escorting family planning cases whereas the performance level was found to be good among majority of ASHAs with regard to escorting antenatal cases, counselling of postnatal cases and getting children immunized. Majority of ASHAs were not performing activities regarding creating awareness on social determinants of health, providing primary medical care for minor ailments, informing births and deaths to SC/PHC, distributing ORS, IFA and chloroquine.Conclusions: Regular on job training as well as review training for ASHAs every 6 months helps them to increase their participation in various activities with a rejuvenated enthusiasm. The incentives for ASHA must be raised and paid promptly to them to improve their performance.
ABSTRACT
Background: “To learn effectively, children need good health” says the World Health Organization’s Expert committee on school health services. Inspite of the primary health care that exists in India, yet it is unable to cover the health needs of school children, especially the primary school children. To know their health status and influencing factors, a study is designed in the rural area of Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh. Methods: A cross sectional study design was used to assess the health condition of the rural government primary school children at school and socio-demographic data at their home during the period July to December 2016. A sample of 683 children from 20 schools was included in the study. The data was analyzed and inferences were drawn. Results: 38.79% of the rural government primary school children had one or more health problem. Dental problems were found in 21.66% followed by skin problems in 8.05%, nutritional defects in 7.61%, eye disorders in 6.88% and ENT problems in 22.84%. Only 5.42% had good personal hygiene. Majority of the children were poor belonging to the socioeconomic status of class IV (19.62%) and class V (76.60%). 83.39% of the children with health problems had poor housing conditions. Conclusions: More than 2/3rd was found suffering from health problem which was almost equally distributed among boys and girls. The suffering children were almost 95% from lower socioeconomic status and 83% with poor housing conditions.