...After months of harassment, underpayment and lack of protection from infection, about 600,000 of the country’s one million Accredited Social Health Activists -- or ASHAs, which also means hope in Hindi -- are going on strike for two days...to draw attention to their plight. Union leaders expect more may join as the word spreads.

They want better and timely pay, and a legal status that ensures minimum wages, to sustain their work of helping Indian officials track down high-risk contacts of Covid-19 patients across slums and hard-to-reach rural parts of the country.

Losing the ASHAs would not only threaten India’s virus-containment effort, but also impact the other essential health services they provide to rural households that range from child vaccinations to tuberculosis control.

...India’s ASHAs have always acted as a stopgap in the country’s porous health care system, delivering assistance from maternal health to immunization in its vast rural hinterland.

Created under the National Rural Health Mission in 2005, they were meant to be a young, roving group of health care workers and are all female, as that means they typically are more welcome in rural homes...

...Although the ASHAs are hoping the strike will improve their circumstances, few can give up the job entirely amid a historic economic contraction, despite the risks.