WHO DG’s Global Health Leaders Awards: India’s ASHA Workers Among 6 Winners

India’s one million all-women Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers were honoured with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General’s Global Health Leaders Award 2022 for their “crucial role” in providing direct access to healthcare facilities in rural areas and their indefatigable efforts to rein in the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the 6 awardees of the WHO Director-General’s Global Health Leaders Awards. The award recognises the outstanding contributions to advancing global health, demonstrated leadership and commitment to regional health issues.

Other Recipients of the Award:

• Dr Paul Farmer was Chair of the Department of Global Health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Partners in Health.
• Dr Ahmed Hankir, a British-Lebanese psychiatrist, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Research in association with Cambridge University andAcademic Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry at King’s College London in the UnitedKingdom.
• Ludmila Sofia Oliveira Varela for her work to facilitate access to sports for all providers, a healthy alternative to risky behaviours among young people, and tackles the growing threat of non-communicable diseases.
• Polio workers in Afghanistan include Mohamamd Zubair Khalazai, NajibullahKosha, Shadab Yosufi, Shareefullah Hemati, Haseeba Omari, Khadija Attaee, MuniraHakimi, Robina Yosufi and Shadab.
• Yōhei Sasakawa is the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination and Japan’s Ambassador for the Human Rights of People Affected by leprosy.