A Study of Mohalla Clinics and its Effectiveness in NCT of Delhi

Abstract

The Mohalla Clinics were started by the Delhi government in the first year after newlineAamAadmi Party (AAP) was elected to office in 2015. The objective was to take newlinediagnostics and treatment of simple ailments to people s doorstep, promulgated as a newlinestep towards achieving universal health coverage. The genesis of the Mohalla Clinics newlinelies in the idea of easing the congestion of tertiary care hospitals and reducing the newlineOOPE of the people by forming the lower-most part of the urban health care newlinespectrum. These clinics are envisaged on the Zero Cost Model for the patients newlineimplying that they aim to provide free consultation, free medicines, and free newlinediagnostics and pathological tests to people (Chandrakant, 2016). These clinics are newlineworking in the direction of ensuring available, accessible, and affordable primary newlinehealth care to all the people, particularly to the ones hailing from underdeveloped newlineareas of Delhi (Sharma, 2016). Before AAP came to power, public health care newlineservices were provided through dispensaries and polyclinics which constituted the newlineprimary level, multi-specialty hospitals formed the second tier and super-specialty newlinehospitals constituted the tertiary health care level. The new government has newlinereorganized the health care delivery infrastructure with Mohalla Clinics constituting newlinethe base of the pyramid. These are followed by Polyclinics that form the second tier newlineof health care and are manned by specialist doctors providing out-patient department newline(OPD) services in gynaecology, paediatrics and so on. The tertiary health care is newlinedelivered through government hospitals, which can be further categorized into multispeciality and super-speciality hospitals providing IPD (in patient department) care newline(IndiaToday, 2019). newline newline