Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu today announced an additional incentive of Rs1,500 to Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) for Covid-related work. Sidhu said the Punjab Government had acknowledged the tremendous efforts being made by more than 20,000 ASHAs & ASHA facilitators in undertaking a range of community-based interventions to tackle the Covid pandemic. Sidhu said in the wake of the additional workload on account of Covid-related work, the government had been giving an additional incentive of Rs 1,000 per month from January 2020 onwards, adding the state had also given an additional incentive of Rs 1,500 per month to the workers from April to June for conducting houseto-house surveys.

Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA)

• ASHA is a trained female community health activist. Selected from the community itself and accountable to it, the ASHA will be trained to work as an interface between the community and the public health system.
• The role of an ASHA is that of a community level care provider. This includes a mix of tasks: facilitating access to health care services, building awareness about health care entitlements especially amongst the poor and marginalized, promoting healthy behaviours and mobilizing for collective action for better health outcomes and meeting curative care needs as appropriate to the organization of service delivery in that area and compatible with her training and skills.