Vijayawada: Health principal secretary Krishna Babu has promised to implement the ‘Family Physician’ programme in full by the time of Sankranti festival in the state.
He told the media here on Thursday that Chief Minister Jagan Reddy wanted the primary healthcare system to be made accessible to the poor in villages and hence the programme of Family Physician scheme was developed.
“We are making efforts to start this as a pilot project in September,” he said, and added that recruitment of health personnel was currently under way. “As part of it, we are setting up 1,032 YSR Village Clinics attached to every village secretariat in the state,” he said, and added that a mid-level health provider, an ANM, and three to four Asha workers would provide health care to the people.
The health official said, “We are having our own buildings for 1,500 clinics in the villages while 8,500 buildings for the purpose are under construction.”
He promised to complete construction of the remaining 3,000 buildings by the end of December. “In every village health clinic, we are keeping 67 medicines for patients and providing medical equipment to have 14 types of medical tests.”
The official sounded confident the government would complete recruitment of all health personnel by Aug. 31.
He explained in detail as to how the family physician programme would work at the PHC level and also how the serious cases would be referred to the empanelled hospitals. “We are making all efforts to ensure 80 per cent of the health problems are attended at the village level so that the people would trust the family physician programme and avail the health care facilities.
