PM Narendra Modi congratulates ASHA workers honoured by WHO, hails them for ‘ensuring a healthy India’
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday congratulated all ASHA workers for bagging World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General’s Global Health Leaders’ Award, saying they are at the “forefront of ensuring a healthy India”.PM Modi, who is in Japan’s Tokyo for a two-day visit to attend the Quad summit, took to Twitter to applaud the one million all-women ASHA workforce that has been honoured by the WHO. “Delighted that the entire team of ASHA workers have been conferred the WHO Director-General’s Global Health Leaders’ Award. Congratulations to all ASHA workers. They are at the forefront of ensuring a healthy India. Their dedication and determination is admirable,” the prime minister tweeted.India’s one million all-women ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers were honoured by the WHO on Sunday for their ‘crucial role’ in providing direct access to primary healthcare facilities in rural areas during the coronavirus pandemic in the country.“The Accredited Social Health Activist Workers (ASHA) are more than 1 million female volunteers in #India, honored for their crucial role in linking the community with the health system and ensuring that those living in rural poverty can access primary health care services,” the WHO tweeted.
ASHA (which means hope in Hindi) volunteers are the Indian government’s affiliated health workers who are the first point of contact in rural India.“These health workers provide maternal care and immunization for children against vaccine-preventable diseases; community health care; treatment for hypertension and tuberculosis and core areas of health promotion for nutrition, sanitation and healthy living,” the healthcare body said in another tweet.
The six awards to recognise outstanding contributions to advancing global health, demonstrated leadership and commitment to regional health issues were announced by WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday.Tedros Tedros decides the awardees for the WHO Director-General’s Global Health Leaders Awards.Among the other notable awardess were the team of polio vaccination workers from Afghanistan, who were killed by armed gunmen in February this year.
