Ayushman Bharat to spread its roots with an aim to set up 150000 health care centers

New Delhi, May 4: In order to establish 1,50,000 the Health and Wellness Centres (HWC) by 2022, share and give a common understanding of the multiple components to enable HWC to deliver comprehensive primary health care, a two-day conference was organized under Ayushman Bharat.

The conference was organized by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with technical support from the National Health Systems Resource Centre, recently.

Workshop proceedings started with an overview presentation of the various components of Comprehensive Primary Health Care. It emphasized the critical importance of selecting motivated candidates as Mid-Level Health Providers and strengthening the Primary Health Care team including the Multi-Purpose Workers (male and female) and ASHA.

The importance of the shift from selective to comprehensive primary health care, the uninterrupted availability of medicines for chronic diseases, and the criticality in establishing a seamless continuum of care, to build trust and confidence in the public health system and in reducing out of pocket expenditure were highlighted.

In addition, the importance of integrating active case finding for tuberculosis in HWC to meet the national commitment of TB elimination was emphasized.

States were asked to develop state-specific action plans indicating timelines. In the first year of the implementation, States were urged to prioritize all PHCs as HWCs in the selected blocks and districts, where infrastructure and HR were already in place. Aspirational districts were to be prioritized. Concurrent strengthening of Sub Health Centres as HWC (HWC-SHC) would also be undertaken in a phased manner so as to meet the commitment of operationalizing 1,50,000 HWC by 2022.

However, it was emphasized that the screening, prevention, control and management of non-communicable diseases, which is one of the packages of expanded services under CPHC, should be widely offered at HWC-SHC in order to address the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases.

Participants included the Principal Secretaries and Mission Directors of NHM from states, National Knowledge Partners, representatives of the Innovation and Learning Centres for CPHC and development partners.