A mother with her bawling kid, an infirm elder of the locality, and the owner of a grocery shop stand expectantly – waiting for the ‘mohalla clinic’, seen as a radical promise in Delhi’s primary healthcare, to throw open its doors.
The clinic, tucked away in a narrow lane of Patparganj’s West Vinod Nagar locality, is part of 21 such facilities that were launched by the Delhi government on March 31. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government plans to set up 1,000 such clinics by December 31.
The necessity of the initiative, still in its pilot phase, becomes clear by the hour, as a steady stream of people troop in and out of its freshly painted rooms, their floors hastily tiled.
Dr Ranjana Saxena, in-charge of the Patparganj clinic, says since its launch she has been attending to around 70 patients everyday from 9 am to 1 pm. “We are paid per patient. Initially, we were told that the government would bear the charge of any assistant we would employ. But now ASHA workers have been attached with us instead,” she says.
Soon after, she admonishes 62-year-old Babulal Sharma, a patient of high blood pressure and thyroid, for not taking painkillers.
Sharma says earlier he had to visit Lady Hardinge Medical College for a routine check-up.
“For minor ailments and routine check-ups mohalla clinics have come as a blessing. Otherwise, I have to travel all the way to the hospital for minor ailments, which are frequent at this age,” he says, with a prescription clutched in his hand.
According to Dr Saxena, who has been given a six-month contract by the government, the facilities provided in the three-room clinic are “adequate” and that medicines are routinely “replenished”.
The clinics, have in their entrances, clear announcements that they offer “free tests, free medicines, and free consultation”. A private laboratory has been entrusted with collecting samples of over 200 kinds of tests.
“We not only collect blood samples or urine samples and send them to labs, we bring the reports and hand them over to the patients too. They don’t have to spend a penny in the whole process,” one of the assistants said.
Another such clinic will soon be open ed inj Mandavali. Housed in a “permanent structure”, the clinic will have facilities at par with the first mohalla clinic that was opened at Rajiv Gandhi JJ Punjabi Colony, a relief camp in Peeragarhi.
The government has rented the rooms for around Rs 12,000 per month in the short term as getting space for setting them up in permanent structures was proving difficult.
In a bid to decongest government hospitals and making healthcare accessible to all, the government has adopted a “three-tier public health roadmap” involving mohalla clinics, polyclinics and hospitals.
Polyclinics will have specialists and will refer only those patients, who require surgery or hospitalisation to a multi-speciality hospital, a government official said.
The government has earmarked Rs 5,259 crore for the health sector in its 2016-17 budget, a hike of close to 10 per cent over the allocation last fiscal.