Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during the inauguration the first Aam Aadmi Clinic in New Delhi on on Sunday. (Press Trust of India)
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today inaugurated the first 'Aam Aadmi Clinic' at Peeragarhi Relief Camp in West Delhi, and said that his government would set up 1,000 such facilities within a year, as announced in its maiden budget, to make primary health care more accessible to people.
"This clinic has been set up at a very low cost, it has been set up at a cost of around Rs 15-20 lakh, whereas earlier a dispensary used to cost much higher. This clinic has all testing facilities too so patients can get any test, from blood tests to ECG, done," he said at the inauguration of the clinic at Peeragarhi Relief Camp.
"This is a prototype clinic. 1,000 such clinics will come up in Delhi within an year. Since there are 70 constituencies in Delhi, on an average each of them will have at least 15 such clinics and I have asked the MLAs to identify prospective locations in their respective constituencies," he added.
The clinic is a peripheral health care unit which is aimed at providing better medical facility to the weaker sections.
The Chief Minister said that the clinics will be able to cure 95 per cent of the patients and will reduce the rush at hospitals such as AIIMS, Safdarjung and GTB Hospital among others, which can cater to patients with serious ailments.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain said, "A gynaecologist and paediatrician will visit the clinic once every week, besides regular doctors posted at these clinics. Ambulance services will be arranged so that if any patient is referred from these clinics to hospitals there is a facility to take him or her there."
"All the receipts and maintenance of medical records will be computerised. We also plan to increase the number of hospital beds to 20,000 in Delhi," Mr Jain said.
Terming the health care infrastructure as "poor" and a "major bottleneck" in the quality of life in the national capital, the Delhi government had allocated Rs 4,787 crore to the health sector. A provision of Rs 500 crore was made for the 'Aam Aadmi' clinics and for increasing the number of government hospital beds.