'Scared of Getting Infected'

Q: What are your COVID-19 related tasks?

ANM: We have to send the people who are coming from outside to the Primary Health Centre for check-up. We also have to send regular reports of the quarantine centres, where these people are quarantined for 14 days to the appointed doctors.

We have to visit these centres every day and send pictures. We are also visiting households with ASHA workers to identify people who are coming from outside, and then ensuring that they stay in the village school for 14 days.

Q: Are you encountering any challenges?

ANM: We are supposed to visit the quarantine centres every day but the government has not provided us with any transport facility. So it is difficult to visit every day.

On some days, we go with the husbands of ASHA workers. But how many days can we do this? Sometimes, we go along with the Corona team. It is difficult to work; the government has not provided us with any vehicle.

The government always gives us work but does not provide facilities to do the work. We are also scared of getting infected. We have got the masks but we still have not received the sanitiser.

The interview was conducted with an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) in Supaul, Bihar in Hindi on 10 April 2020, and has been translated.