Dear Neil and HIFA colleagues,
My weekend musings:
Involving HWs in contributing to EMR sounds good.
However, let us be wary of making clinicians become redundant or some rare special figures in the Health system when all tasks are shifted to the HWs, all thinking shifting to AI and the digidocuments are what will help communicaton with patients in the 'informed decision-making process'.
I personally feel that HWs are a welcome addition to reach the unreached for services or research in a good health system. They contribute much as human resources compensating for the lack of doctors and other professionals in many developing countries with meagre resources when the National heath budgets continue to be poor.
It is time some of the international organizations (INGOs) and Academia with active National heath programs supported by WHO suggest that all member nations of WHO, at least the ones having HCWs as a significant workforce to strengthen Health systems, recommend a budgetary allocation for adequate remuneration of digitally enabled FLWs beyond supplying mobile phones or tablets.
When we add tasks to the HWs we may need also to budget for their capacity building and services on par with Physician assistants.
While on the topic of digitally enabled HCWs getting empowered in the future scenarios wherein we seek to extend the scope of their work and bring in greater efficiency, keeping in mind the ethics, legal ambit and more involved in task shifting, we should not miss the moral responsibility of giving them the remuneration they deserve for the time and efforts that go into their work.
These are my personal views and not necessarily meant for the group report on the informal use of the mobile phone by FLWs that we had as thematic discussion in May 2025.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Sunanda
Dr. Sunanda K. Reddy
Chairperson (Honorary),
CARENIDHI Trust, New Delhi, India
Phone: +91-9818621980
HIFA Profile: Sunanda Kolli Reddy is a Developmental Paediatrician from New Delhi,India, with a special interest in Early Child Care and Development of children with neurodevelopmental problems in underserved communities. She is actively involved in health promotion, community-based research, care provider training for promoting abilities of children with special needs, through the various programmes of Centre for Applied Research and Education on Neurodevelopmental Impairments and Disability-related Health Initiatives (CARENIDHI), which she heads (www.carenidhi.org). Her work in the community settings to widen the disability-in-development model of CBR encompasses the wider determinants of health and human capabilities and issues which impact the lives of the poor. She combines her experience in developmental paediatrics with the core work of CARENIDHI's grassroots convergence programmes in partnership with groups working in the area of Implementation research and policy. She is a member of the HIFA working group on Community Health Workers. http://www.hifa.org/projects/community-health-workers http://www.hifa.org/support/members/sunanda write2sunanda AT gmail.com