Case Studies on Maternal & Newborn Care among Recently Delivered Women of Scheduled Caste Community through the Role of ASHA in Gonda District of Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

When ASHAs were introduced in NRHM in 2005, their primary aim was to visit homes of newborns as the first program in UP operated through the ASHAs was the Comprehensive Child Survival Program in 2008. Since then, tracking of all deliveries and all the newborns are an integral part of the work of ASHAs in all the primary health care programs operated by the NHM in UP. Evaluation studies on the performance of ASHAs was done since 2011 as by then ASHAs had actually worked in the field for a minimum period of 5 years. It is to be noted that National Rural Health Mission was rolled out in April 2005 but it took about one to two years for the states to hire ASHAs and put things in place right from the state to the village level. In this article, a comprehensive feedback is elicited from the mothers of Scheduled Caste (SC) community from the last visit of ASHAs to their homes to visits during pregnancy & newborn care in Gonda district of UP. The current study explores some of the crucial variables through five case studies on the performance of ASHAs through their message delivery & visits during natal, newborn care of mothers of Scheduled Caste (SC) community. The article also includes the feedback of the SC community mothers on the work & approach of ASHAs. That’s how the perception of the Recently Delivered Women of SC community in the state of UP is included in this article. The mothers of SC community responded about the performance based upon their experience in visits & messaging by ASHAs on Janani Surakhya Yojana (JSY), New Born Care (NBC) & Routine Immunization (RI) as these were the frontline programs for the states. The responses of these mothers or Recently Delivered Women (RDW) (as named for the current study) had a 3 to 6 months old child during the time of survey. They were selected as respondents as they were from SC community & were in a position to recollect the health care events of their children. The relevance of the study assumes significance as .....