Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services programming head Aashish Padmanabhan addresses a seminar on training of Asha workers in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, Jan. 18: Emergency deliveries would soon be handled professionally by trained Asha workers in rural areas of 12 districts. They would also be able to detect diseases of a newborn at preliminary stage after undergoing training in phases.

The training of 50 Asha workers started here today. The training would be split into three phases of 17 days, seven days and four days.

Voluntary organisation Janani, appointed as the state agency to train the Asha workers, started the programme on its Kidwaipuri premises today. It will train 410 Asha workers over a period of 15 months.

The first phase of the training, which started today, aims to facilitate the Asha workers with the preparations they should take in case of an emergency delivery or the ways they can detect diseases in a newborn. Janani has been assigned the work to train Asha workers from Patna, Buxar, Vaishali, Bhojpur, Gaya, Nalanda, Rohtas, Nawada, Aurangabad, Jehanabad, Arwal and Kaimur districts.

General manager of Janani Ranjit Banerjee said: “Janani has been chosen as the state training agency by the government of Bihar to train the Asha workers from 12 districts. A tripartite memorandum of understanding has been signed among State Health Society, Bihar, National Health System Resource Centre and Janani. Gandhi Kushtha Nivaran Pratishthan and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services, the district training agencies, selected the 50 Asha workers for training.”

“In the first round, we are training 50 district Asha trainers. Later, we will organise similar programmes in order to complete our target of training 410 Asha workers,” said Ranjit, adding that the district trainers were being instructed by a cadre of state-level master trainers.

State Health Society, Bihar, Asha Resource Centre, Bihar, and SEARCH, Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, have trained the instructors at the programme in support with National Health System Resource Centre.

Shalini, one of the master trainers, said: “We will impart technical skills like checking a baby’s temperature, counting the breaths of a newborn or checking if a newborn is suffering from some infection. We will tell them about the aspects of primary healthcare so that the trainers can extend their knowledge to the Asha workers.”

Those chosen for the post of Asha trainers have been selected on two criteria. First, they should be graduates and second, the person concerned should have rendered his/her service in the health sector as a volunteer. Banerjee added: “The people being trained in the programme will be eligible to train Asha workers when they go back home. Every Asha trainer will be assigned the job to train rural-level volunteers recruited by the panchayati raj department and governed by the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) of the Centre.”

The trainees are being instructed according to modules 5, 6 and 7 of NRHM for Asha workers. The modules focus on the development of leadership skills among others.