Health Workers

Health workers, especially those working in periphery, can play a crucial role to discourage the irrational use of pesticide and reduce harms associated with it. They are the ones to whom farmers visit with various pesticide related complaints. Furthermore, they have the capacity to mobilize health team to identify such vulnerable groups from larger communities, and provide counseling for safer practice of pesticide use. However, our study found that the health workers were not adequately oriented to the problem of pesticide, and therefore, were skipping interrogation about such exposure while taking clinical history. This could be one of the reasons why farmers receive only short-term symptomatic treatment and continue to repeatedly face the same health problems due to exposure to the hazardous chemicals. To make aware and skilled in identifying, managing and preventing pesticide exposure including the acute poisoning, FHEN provided three-day training to the health workers to sensitize them on this issue and also about their crucial role which could be milestone in improving the health of farmers

(for details click_Health workers report).