Health Volunteers

Introduction;

Engaging people in health development activities can be done through volunteering or community based activities. The lady health workers initiative in Pakistan and community based breastfeeding in Bangladesh, are examples of using of voluntary activities of people in health systems.

The volunteer women health volunteers program, as a voluntary action government-based, is a national initiative that has been launched since 1999 in the Islamic republic of Iran. Health volunteers are considered as interfaces between health centers and people living in slum, rural immigrants and marginalized. Health volunteers, with the help of health care providers, have an important role in identifying health hazards, helping patients and clients

Women Health Volunteers are invited among whom living in the area, have literacy to read and write, have suitable social acceptability, and having the interest and incentive to engage in social activities. Each Health volunteers is assigned to cover 50 households in her neighborhood, their duties and responsibilities as health volunteer. The Ministry of Health asserts that health volunteers have the responsibility and duty to participate in health education activity, weekly training sessions, follow-up household members under coverage and updating demographic information.

In recent years, extensive urbanization, changes in the Political perspective of the Ministry of Health have changed the type of women Health volunteer activities. At the moment, the main challenges is how to maintain women health volunteers and how to keep their activities resistant despite the important role of health volunteers in providing health

A purposive sampling technique with a maximum variation in characteristics such as the age, gender, education was applied. The characteristics of participants are listed in table 1. Sampling continued until it reached data saturation, means that additional data could not be found to develop new