The Village Health Worker (VHW) acts as the local agent of positive health and social change. She is selected by her community and receives training in health, community development and organization, communication skills, and personal development from CRHP. Her primary role is to freely share the knowledge she obtains with everyone in the community, to organize community groups and to facilitate action, especially among women, the poor and marginalized. At the outset, many of these VHWs were often illiterate women from the untouchable (Dalit) caste. The concept and utilization of the VHW has been internationally recognized and often emulated for its dramatic positive impact on public health at the community level.

VHW training was designed to empower these often oppressed women by increasing their knowledge, building skills, and demystifying medicine so as to truly put health in the people’s hands. The initially high rates of diseases and premature deaths in the area were primarily linked to malnutrition, water-borne diseases resulting in diarrhea and infections, untreated communicable diseases, lack of family planning, and harmful superstitious beliefs and practices. The training these women received opened a doorway for effective, locally-managed and relatively simple interventions to halt this vicious cycle that was causing so much pain and suffering.                                            



 

The VHWs, working entirely as volunteers, became empowered by learning skills with which to earn a living through micro-enterprise. As community acceptance and trust in these VHWs began to grow so did the health of their villages. As individual villages dramatically improved their quality of life and overall level of health, other villages came forward asking to participate.

Several of the Village Health Workers trained by CRHP have been invited to address international conferences on public health. An example is Muktabai, who became an exemplary health worker and had an opportunity to speak at an international conference held in Washington DC, USA. A bit of her experience is given below:

      In a huge conference hall in Washington DC, over a thousand participants listen with rapt attention to Muktabai Pol, a village health worker from Jamkhed, India. The listeners include officials from WHO and UNICEF, ministers of health, health professionals and representatives of universities from many parts of the world. Muktabai shares her experience of providing primary health care in a remote Indian village. She concludes her speech by pointing to the glittering lights in the hall. “This is a beautiful hall, and the shining chandeliers are a treat to watch,” she says. “One has to travel thousands of miles to come to see their beauty. The doctors are like these chandeliers, beautiful and exquisite, but expensive and inaccessible.” She then pulls out two wick lamps from her purse. She lights one. “This lamp is inexpensive and simple, but unlike the chandeliers, it can transfer its light to another lamp.” She lights the other wick lamp with the first. Holding up both lamps in her outstretched hands, she says, “I am like this lamp, lighting the lamp of better health. Workers like me can light another and another and thus encircle the whole earth. This is Health for All.” The audience rises to its feet in a standing ovation.