Annapoorna Singh sat on the floor of her kitchen cooking the day’s meal. It is a ramshackle kitchen, just like the rest of the house with cracked walls, peeling paint, windows covered with newspapers in lieu of curtains.
“We pay Rs 4,000 a month as rent for this house, and even that is difficult for us sometimes,” 42-year-old Annapoorna, who is an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, told Gaon Connection. Her family has had to change houses many times and is constantly under the threat of being evicted for not paying rent on time, she said.
But despite the poverty and difficulties, Annapoorna is a conscientious ASHA, a frontline health worker. Perhaps, it has to do with the fact that she is herself a polio victim, and knows the importance of ensuring the children in the areas she works in, are inoculated in time. She is attached to the primary healthcare centre at JP Nagar, Manohar Nagar, Kanpur.
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Undaunted by her physical problems, Annapoorna cycles door to door in her assigned area, counselling parents about the importance of polio vaccines and other inoculations for their children. She is busy all day administering those vaccines and polio drops and assisting women in the delivery of their babies.
Annapoorna’s day begins at dawn as she prepares and packs food for her husband Shishupal Singh who leaves home for work at 7 AM and returns only at 9 PM. She leaves home soon after her husband only to return in the evening after being on the move all day.
Annapoorna and her 48-year-old husband Sishupal have a 20-year-old son, Yatharth, and a 17-year-old daughter, Yogyata.
“But all the exhaustion drains away when I hear the laughter of infants and see the happy faces of their parents,” she said. There are days, Annapoorna said, when she has missed her meals as pregnant women go into labour, someone’s polio vaccine is due, or some medicines have to be dropped off at a patient’s home.
Annapoorna and her 48-year-old husband Sishupal have a 20-year-old son, Yatharth, who has just passed his inter exam and a 17-year-old daughter, Yogyata who is in the eleventh standard in a government school. “I am used to hardship and poverty and a life of want, but if my children get educated and find good jobs, nothing will make me happier,” she said.
The Rs 2,000 a month she earns as an ASHA worker, and the Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 her husband brings in as an employee at a plastic factory in Kanpur, barely makes ends meet for the family, Annapoorna said.
Annapoorna is a conscientious ASHA, attached to the primary healthcare centre at JP Nagar, Manohar Nagar, Kanpur.
“I sold whatever little land I had in the village to get my sisters married off. Educating our children, paying house rent, putting food on the table is a struggle,” Sishupal told Gaon Connection.
But he is proud of Annapoorna. “Despite the fact that she is afflicted with polio, she works shoulder to shoulder with me to keep the household running,” he said.
It was in 2018, in response to an advertisement in a newspaper, that Annapoorna became an ASHA worker. Two years later in early 2020, COVID pandemic struck leading to a nationwide lockdown.
Pallavi Pandey, the Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife (ANM) said that during her association with Annapoorna, she has been always available and uncomplaining towards her work.
“Overnight our responsibilities increased. I had to make multiple trips delivering medicines, sometimes climbing three or four flights of stairs, with my polio-stricken leg. Then there was the added pressure of looking after ourselves and protecting ourselves against the virus,” she recalled. It was physically and emotionally exhausting.
Pallavi Pandey, the Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife (ANM) was all praises for Annapoorna. “We work well together and during my association with her, I have never seen her refuse any work. Every time I phone her, she is there on her cycle, uncomplaining, always helpful,” Pandey told Gaon Connection.
Annapoorna, along with Pallavi Pandey, holds immunisation camps where they administer polio drops to children or provide them other important vaccinations.
