Health Awareness Must At Village Level

Mudasir Ahanger
Awareness always plays an important role in our life and keeps us up to date in daily life which acts as a main pillar of gaining specific knowledge to all kind of issues which are continuously burgeoning and knowing us to what is happening around the world. The health departments at district level must be conducting awareness programs in every village for making common people aware in such infectious diseases not only the existing one but all such types of diseases which are highly communicable. It is on the forefront now the horrifying situation across the globe that made by COVID­19 due to relentlessly grappling which has put all the countries at stake and has ruthlessly caused havoc as death figures nearly reached 6000 in the world and the new cases now confirmed more than 1, 30000 as per the official figures. So, this clearly explains that it is alarming and life threatening call which largely grabbed the attention of the whole world for major concerns of taking preventive measures. The global eye is focusing on scientists and virologists to take an early initiative for seeking out its special antidote by putting all the efforts with all hands on deck in order to make a complete grip on increasing the further cases and deaths. As a matter of fact WHO declared Public Heath international Emergency of COVID­19 in the last month when the death toll went on extra mile. After a couple of weeks they declared it pandemic on 11th March 2020 when it keep on spreading and infecting the people by breaking all the frontiers and other such hurdles for invading into other territories. My point which I want to decipher here is that if it a big concern for all why we can’t conduct awareness programs at village level that comes under a particular jurisdiction so that at least everyone should get familiar about the preventive measures and he/she not to get any fear from the COVID­19 pandemic.
To contain Epidemic effectively it is SINE QUA NON to uplift rural health awareness
The common people are not much aware in regard to precautions and specific guidelines which may help us locally so that we will act upon by taking all these specific prescriptions for saving lives. I am dumfounded that why they are not conducting such important programs in the villages so that the public will get to know some knowledge and feeling a little comfort in times of need and proved to be very soothing for them. This is the time that we should apply pragmatic way more than to have written health prescriptions on cards for apprising common people regarding any disease. It needs a set of induction primarily for transforming key messages in time by conducting health programs at village levels. We are all witnessed in rural areas by and large that we are lacking in basic amenities that are considered essential services in any imminent emergency impending to occur. Medical departments should envisage that we have large responsibilities in society for saving life of a common people by giving good treatment and by awakening them properly through certain guidelines pertaining to diseases and preventions whenever it required. Departments should take an initiative for distributing of masks at village level and other such valuable things that will be helpful for the people who are more susceptible to viral infections. If we conduct programs at village level and there will be likely to have less chances of getting few diseases which are contagious but needs complete awareness prior they will turn to epidemic to take lives on large scale. There must be a separate team of health educators who can aware people and educate them as well. This is true that we have panchayats in our villages which can play an important role during the situations but unfortunately they are not being used for a particular work. Administration should take some steps for implementing these programs in order to strengthening its role at the village level. It is often saying that prevention is better than cure but awareness is way where it directs us for prevention. It would be a wonderful work if the health departments take a notice and move on one step forward to draw a figure for a new thought of health awareness programming on the ground level. Majority of the issues will be sorted out very smoothly if they will commit to introduce it in the villages and indeed there will be minimizing of the burden then in the health departments at the district level. We often see nowadays in hospitals, patients in long queues with pale faces waiting for hours in the blistering sun all day to get a turn for medical prescription. At the block level we have sub centers and PHCs for taking the responsibilities of health and caring of different patients that is good but health awareness we can’t get from them as they are not health educators. Eventually we villagers are very anxious about the health issues only because of lacking some awareness.
(The author is a PG Student at Kashmir University. Views are his own [email protected] )