‘Family doctor’ programe in Andhra Pradesh to provide govt healthcare at doorstep

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy has launched the “Family Doctor” programme under which qualified doctors, through 10,032 Dr YSR Village Health Clinics across the state, would offer preventive health care, taking their services to household doorsteps.

The “family doctor” concept was launched by the chief minister at Lingamguntla in Palnadu district on Thursday.

Addressing a public meeting, Reddy said that the programme would “herald revolutionary changes in extending health care to the needy".

Just like the social welfare pensions are being handed at the beneficiaries' houses, the healthcare facilities would also be extended to the people at their doorstep, the CM said.

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Besides visiting the bedridden people to treat them, family doctors would extend free medical treatment to people suffering from both communicable and non-communicable diseases and to lactating mothers and anaemic schoolchildren and women.

The doctors would refer the patients in need of advanced medical treatment to Aarogyasri Network Hospitals while YSR Health Clinics would extend post-treatment health care to such patients.

Each mandal would consist of two primary healthcare centres (PHCs) and each PHC would have two doctors - one of them taking care of out-patients and the other visiting YSR Health Clinics in assigned villages, schools and anganwadi centres twice a month.

The doctors would identify people suffering from BP, diabetes and anaemic conditions and provide them treatment in the initial stages preventing serious heart and other diseases among them.

YSR Village Health Clinics, to be manned by Community Health Officers (CHOs), ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse and Midwives) and ASHA (Accredited Social Health Assistant) workers, would be equipped with 105 kinds of medicines, lab facilities to conduct 14 kinds of diagnostic tests and 936 Mobile Medical Units (104).

“Our government has brought revolutionary changes in health care as it highly values the lives of people. With one PHC serving about 2,500 people, the family doctor programme would soon turn AP into a role model for other states in preventive health care,” Reddy said.

The phone numbers and other details of the doctors would be displayed at the Village Secretariats which would maintain health records and ensure that the medical services would be available round the clock, the CM said, while appealing to the medical staff to stay in the villages where they are posted to serve the people 24x7.

The chief minister prodded the public to gauge the difference between the TDP and YSRCP rule in health, educational and other sectors.

Reddy said that medical procedures under the YSR Aarogyasri went up to 3,255 now from 1,000 during the TDP rule. “Our government has been spending over Rs 18,000 crore every year on the medical and health sector against the meagre Rs 8,000 crore spent by the TDP.”