Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today embarked on a major campaign for Infrastructure upgradation/ strengthening of Secondary Health Care Facilities across the state at a cost of Rs 1300 crore.As a part of this the Chief Minister and Delhi Chief Minister dedicated Mata Kaushalya Hospital at Patiala on Monday, which will cater to the population of around 20 lakh people in and around the historic town of Patiala. This hospital has 300 beds and now another 66 beds are being added in this prestigious hospital. The hospital has been strengthened at a cost of Rs. 13.80 crores and is equipped with facilities of ICU, NICU and others.
Ushering an era of Health revolution in the state, the Government has announced a Special project for strengthening of Community Health Centers, Sub Divisional Hospitals and District Hospitals in its budget for Financial Year 2023-24 and the project will be carried out in a phased manner at an estimated cost of Rs. 1300 crores. Today the first phase of the project covering 19 District Hospitals, 6 Sub Divisional Hospitals and 15 CHCs has been launched at an estimated cost of Rs. 402 crores.
As a part of this project, the government has decided to set up a dedicated Patient facilitation center to assist and guide the patients with regard to the services in the Hospitals, distribution of various specialties and others.A fully equipped Modular Operation Theaters (OTs) will be constructed in each of these Health Care Facilities and the Emergency Blocks will be further strengthened with the availability of all equipment including Ventilators, Cardiac monitors and others. The Intensive Care Units (ICUs) will be opened in all the District Hospitals. In a revolutionary step, the Punjab government has also established and operationalized 664 Aam Aadmi Clinics (AACs) in the state in the last one year with an objective to provide primary health care services to the community at its doorstep.
A total of 80 types of medicines and 41 diagnostic tests are being provided free of cost at these clinics. The clinics have a modern IT infrastructure and all the work related to patients’ treatment i.e. registration, diagnosis, drug dispensation and others is carried out on the I.T. tablets provided by the Government. Approximately 59 lakh patients have visited the clinics in the last one year out of which 9.54 lakh have availed the diagnostic facilities and medicines worth Rs. 40.50 crore have been provided free of cost to the patients through these clinics.
These clinics are playing an important role in reducing burden on pockets of the common man and also in reducing the patients load on higher Health Care Facilities. Likewise, dedicated centers providing maternal health and child health care services are being set up by the Government and such centers have been dedicated to people at Kharar and Budhlada whereas such centers at Nakodar and Raikot will soon be dedicated to the people. Similarly, a special project to modernize the de-addiction and rehabilitation centers has been envisaged.
Such modern centers will provide not only the advanced therapeutic facilities/ therapies but also will have a digital infrastructure and will be accredited from the Standard Accreditation Organization. Six de-addiction centers and eight rehabilitation centers have been identified for development as modern centers. Drug addiction will be decriminalized and addiction will be treated as mental health disorder, a new Multi disciplinary approach with in-house/attached Skill development centers with linkages to employment generation schemes along with this Community and NGO participation against drugs will be encouraged.
The government is laying focus on augmenting the manpower in government hospitals and so far nine super specialists, 299 specialists,1094 Staff nurses, 122 Para medics, 113 clerks and others have been recruited in the Health department. Now with the recruitment of 1866 medical and para-medical staff, the Health services will be further strengthened in the state. A record number of 300 House Surgeons have joined at various District Hospitals and Sub Divisional Hospitals against the meagre No. of 88 House Surgeons in the previous Governments.
Other than this, the Government has empaneled, on per patient basis, 633 Medical officers, 636 Pharmacists, 429 Clinic Assistants and 172 Sweeper cum Helpers to provide seamless and high quality services to the citizens at Aam Aadmi Clinics established by it. The number of MBBS seats have been increased by 25 each at GMC, Patiala and Faridkot Medical Colleges. Likewise, due to strenuous efforts of the state government, DNB seats have increased from 42 in 1922 to 85 in 2023 and eight new districts viz Fatehgarh Sahib, SBS Nagar, Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur, Pathankot, Barnala, Kapurthala and SAS Nagar have got DNB seats taking the tally to 14 districts from the earlier 6 districts.
In order to emerge Punjab as hub of medical education, new Medical Colleges with 100 MBBS seats are being established at Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur at an estimated cost of Rs.415 crores. In the same manner a minority Medical College of 100 MBBS seats is being established at Malerkotla and a special Punjab Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences has been established at SAS Nagar. With an objective to enhance the health of the society, a special project "CM Di Yogshala" has been launched in Punjab to encourage and provide regular yoga sessions to the citizens.
The initiative is an attempt to provide a model of yoga which is accessible to all and free for all. More than 300 supervised classes are being held six days a week in different cities of the State in which nearly 10,000 citizens have been participating in these Yoga sessions. About 180 more trainers have completed their training sessions and will start taking classes from October 4th.