The State government’s flagship programme, Family Physician Concept, is all set to be officially launched this year, which has been a huge success ever since its trial run across the state. Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy is likely to launch the programme either in January or February.
The Family physician concept has been introduced to provide quality healthcare at village level, while reducing the load on secondary and tertiary hospitals. The government has employed 2,398 doctors, particularly for this concept, at 11,042 Public Health Centre (PHC), including village health clinics.
According to the officials, the response from the villagers has been encouraging so far. A total number of 17.64 lakh villagers have benefitted from the programme. Speaking to TNIE, Commissioner of Health and Family Welfare J Nivas said, “Six services will be provided to the villagers such as out-patient, antenatal, post-natal, school visit, anganwadi visit and visit to bed-ridden patients. The physicians will also inspect the sanitation in the villages in addition to screening.
YSR health clinics
Meanwhile, most of the YSR Health Clinics will come into force this year, which are aimed at providing healthcare services to the rural population.The government is setting up YSR Village Clinics for every 2,000 population in Andhra Pradesh.Of the targeted 10,032 village clinics, 3,673 are ready. An amount of Rs 1,692 crore was sanctioned for their construction.
The Village Clinics are envisaged to provide round-the-clock healthcare services at the village level. Each village clinic will have one ANM (Auxiliary Nursing Midwifery) and one Mid-Level Health Provider (MLHP).
Adding to these, under the Nadu-Nedu programme in the health sector, the State government is revamping the hospitals in the state at a cost of Rs 16,255 crore. As many as 11,888 works have been taken up under the programme and construction of 4,851 new hospitals have been completed.
Starting from Primary Health centres (PHCs), Village and Ward clinics, Community Health Centres (CHC), Area Hospitals (AH), District Hospitals (DH) and development works relating to teaching hospitals have been taken up under the Nadu-Nedu programme.
New medical colleges
Another key initiative taken up by the state government is the construction of 17 new medical colleges at a cost of Rs 12,268 crore, along with the existing 11 medical colleges. The new colleges will be built in Paderu, Vizianagaram, Narsipatnam, Rajahmundry, Palakole and so on.