Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated 152 mohalla clinics on Sunday, taking the number of the neighbourhood facilities providing free primary healthcare in Delhi to 450, officials said.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain was also present at the event in Pitampura, where the Aam Aadmi Party government had built the first mohalla clinic in 2015.
The Delhi government, in a statement released after the event, claimed that the inauguration of 152 mohalla clinics had “set a world record”.
A mohalla clinic is a neighbourhood facility for providing free primary healthcare to the city’s residents closer home. A typical mohalla clinic has a doctor, a midwife-cum-nurse and an array of diagnostic services and essential medicines are provided free of cost to patients there.
“Spectacular development initiatives have been possible because the people of Delhi elected a responsible and accountable government in 2015. The development bandwagon should not be stopped, but must be accelerated,” the CM said, weeks ahead of the Delhi Assembly elections.
“Today is a very happy day for the people of Delhi as 152 new mohalla clinics at various places have been inaugurated. So far, there were around 300 such clinics. The total number of these clinics has now gone up to 450,” Kejriwal said.
Since the launch of the facility, mohalla clinics have served two crore OPD patients and 18 lakh tests have been conducted there until November 2019, he said.
Officials said MLAs in their respective areas also inaugurated mohalla clinics simultaneously in 43 Assembly constituencies, along with councillors and aldermen.
Kejriwal claimed that for the first time, the expansion of healthcare facilities was happening on such a large scale in the country and probably in the world.
“We had targeted to open 1,000 mohalla clinics in Delhi. Due to administrative reasons, work in this regard could resume just three-four months ago, and resumed at an accelerated speed. Within the next three-four months, remaining mohalla clinics will be inaugurated,” Kejriwal said.
He said people’s faith in healthcare facility in Delhi has increased and now “even the rich visit mohalla clinics”. “In the past 70 years, different governments in Delhi built made available 10,000 beds in government hospitals,” he said. He added that the government is working to expand the facility to add 15,000 new hospital beds. “The foundation stones for many big hospitals have been laid,” the AAP supremo said.
