Sunita Sharma, female multipurpose worker, School of Public Health, PGIMER, has been selected for National Florence Nightingale Award 2014. The President of India will be giving away the award on May 12 at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi.
Sunita Sharma is working as a health worker in an urban resettlement colony in the Urban Health and Training Centre (UHTC) under Department of Community Medicine, School of Public Health, PGIMER Chandigarh for the past 18 years. The population of this colony comprises mainly of migrants from different states and most of them belong to lower socio-economic class.
The population of the colony is around 27,000. Sunita developed an excellent rapport with this community, and people identify her as one of their family member. People of different age groups and gender, approach her for their health related issues due to the trust they have developed for her and the immediate medical help given by her.
Though she has been given a separate survey area within this colony, she on her own surveys other areas and provides medical care to the needy. Even her superiors wondered many times how she could render help related to health issues of other areas.
She maintains an excellent coordination with other health workers of UHTC and also with the workers of departments like ICDS, sanitation, NGOs and schools etc. She has been assisting Composite Targeted Intervention Project in identifying and following high risk behaviour people for targeted intervention.
She has helped the area and sector supervisors of the Pulse Polio Immunisation to have adequate vaccinators by motivating volunteers from the same community and is known for her updated records and timely quality reports.