Marathon ANM: a peek into the rural health engines of India

She’s done 10,000 plus deliveries in the last 25 years of her service, more than 1000 No-Scalpel Vasectomy (NSV) and a similarly staggering number of immunizations. For the last few years she is averaging 4-5 deliveries a day spread across 24 hours.
 

Mrs.Sobha Mishra (ANM Bisahiya, Pratapnagar, U.P, India) is no ordinary soul as she belongs to a part of the world where poverty is almost a norm, women struggle for basic rights and societal and religious taboos are much prominent yet amongst everything she has created an identity for herself as someone with kind, safe and skilled pair of hands.

The belief and faith entrusted upon her has only grown in the recent times as she now receives pregnancy cases even from the far-off villages and in some cases pregnant women from other districts come to have her alongside in their happiest hour.

She says “I try to be available 24 hours a day and such accessibility has resulted in better response from the women and their families, with experience I know it when a case seems complicated and needs specialist care and I refer it immediately to the nearest govt. hospital and that is the reason I have had no maternal mortality in my sub center”. 

She further adds “I love my work and offer shelter and food to the poor women who come to my centre but with very limited resources with me it becomes difficult at times especially in rainy season when pregnant women sometimes even have to stand outside in the rain to wait for their turn, but their faith in me keeps all of us going. God has been very kind to all of us”.

We visited one more ANM sub-centre and a additional PHC after visiting her and found that the annual deliveries conducted at both of them together was not even 5% of what Sobha does. We could do no more than just think and admire.

For 25 years of her commendable services she’s still to receive any significant recognition and the token of appreciation from the Project Director, Manthan at the end of our meeting was the highest reward she has received till date.

She did say “I want to make my daughter a doctor and my son will do a MBA”, any doctor daughter or a MBA son would be proud of such a mother.