The much ambitious project ‘Aam Aadmi Clinics’ initiated by the Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann-led Punjab government for strengthening and transforming primary health care in the state achieved another landmark as the Outpatient Department (OPD) figure has hit the landmark one crore on Tuesday, said Punjab Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Balbir Singh here.
“Over 1 crore people in the state have availed free treatment from these Aam Aadmi Clinics in the last one and half year,” he said. Pertinently, there are 664 Aam Aadmi Clinics— 236 in urban areas and 428 in Rural areas— functioning in the state providing free treatment, besides offering 80 types of free medicines and 38 types of free diagnostics tests. All the clinics are IT-enabled with end-to-end digitisation of registration, doctor consultation, investigations, and prescriptions.
The Health Minister was chairing a high-level virtual meeting with all the Civil Surgeons, Deputy Medical Superintendents and Senior Medical Officers (SMOs) to review the ongoing development projects including free medicines, X-Ray, Ultrasound, Farishtey Scheme and Aam Aadmi Clinics.
He said that the Punjab Government has already rolled out the much ambitious Farishtey Scheme under which free treatment is being provided to all road accident victims, irrespective of their nationality, caste, or socio-economic status. Anyone taking the road accident victim to the hospital for treatment will be honoured and rewarded with Rs 2000, he said, while adding that there will be no questioning by police or hospital authorities from the person, who brought the road accident victim to the hospital, until and unless he himself wants to become an eye witness.
Dr Balbir Singh, while taking stock of supply of medicines at Government Health Facilities, strictly asked the Civil Surgeons and SMOs to ensure that no patient should have to go outside to purchase medicines. “All the government health facilities have sufficient stock of free medicines. Civil Surgeons and SMOs have also been allocated funds to purchase medicines in case they are short of any particular medicines,” he added.
He said that to provide X-ray and Ultrasound facilities to patients coming at Government Health Facilities (which are not equipped with these machines), Punjab Government has empanelled private diagnostic centres where patients can avail these facilities at nominal price.
Meanwhile, Principal Secretary Health Ajoy Sharma, MD National Health Mission Dr Abhinav Trikha, MD Punjab Health System Corporation (PHSC) Varinder Kumar Sharma, Director Health and Family Welfare Dr Adarshpal Kaur and Director Punjab Health System Corporation PHSC Dr Anil Goyal also attended the meeting.