CHANDIGARH:Due to the Punjab government not receiving National Health Mission (NHM) funds for the past 18 months, the AAP-led government now relented and agreed to change the names of nearly half of the Aam Aadmi Clinics (AACs) across the state. Additionally, the photo of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann will be removed from their facades.
Sources said that the name of those Aam Aadmi Clinics (ACCs) will be changed as the branding of those clinics will be tweaked, on which the money from the National Health Mission comes and is spent.
There are around 870 Aam Aadmi Clinics (AACs) in the state, of which names of approximately 400 such clinics will be changed as the process has almost begun. Also, the photo of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann will be removed from the facade of these clinics.
As the state government has accepted to make the changes the central government has also agreed to give the money from the centre under the NHM scheme. Around Rs 650 crore will be given to the state government under this scheme but it will only come in installments, said sources.
It was in February 2023 that the union government stopped NHM funds to Punjab claiming that the AAP-led state government was branding centrally sponsored health and wellness schemes as AACs. After the talks, the state government offered to tweak the branding and add the Centre’s flagship scheme, Ayushman Bharat, on the AAC facade.
The AAP government had been blaming the Union government for the stalemate over the non-release of NHM grants totalling Rs 650 crore and another Rs1,100 crore under special assistance by the Centre.
Confirming the development, Punjab Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Balbir Singh told this newspaper that the state government was in discussion with the central government on this issue and had almost reached a consensus. Both sides have reservations, the Centre about the clinic's name and photo, and the state government has its own concerns. "The AACs are built at two places firstly in the existing infrastructure of the state health department in the community health centre and in urban areas in the PHCs or in suvidha centre or other government buildings", he said.
"So this change of name of AACs will not be applicable on the buildings which are not with the state health department as this scheme is of the state government. Where there is funding of centre and state government 60:40 as the land is of the state government on those building there will be co-branding. Where it is state-funded there is state government branding. Almost half of such clinics will be co-branded," he explained.
The problem started when the Punjab government branded the Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness centres as Aam Aadmi Clinic (PHC-HWC) instead of Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centre (now, Ayushman Arogya Mandir), thereby violating the provisions of the pact signed between the Union Health Ministry and the state government. The state has also not followed the colour scheme, nor has it displayed the six logos.