Role of Community Health Workers in Rural India

The most recent World health report focuses the worlds attention on human resources as the key ingredient to successful health systems functioning and it highlights the growing human resource crisis, particularly in low-income countries. Shortages of skilled health workers, particularly in underserved areas, have been identified as a key facet of the growing human resource crisis. These shortages are driven by a number of factors: the dramatic increase in demand for health workers in high-income countries that has created a tremendous pull of health workers into these countries; increasing morbidity, mortality and absenteeism rates, coupled with increasing workloads due to the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; and inadequately funded and poorly managed and performing health systems, which lead to deteriorating working conditions in many underserved areas, creating a strong push factor.