India brings 50,000 Ayushman Bharat centres into operation during pandemic

Amidst the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic, India managed to make functional more than 50,000 (50,025) Ayushman Bharat - Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs) across the country.

With the aim of providing comprehensive primary health care (CPHC) services to the communities closer to their homes, 1.5 lakh AB-HWCs will be established by December 2022, the Union health ministry said on Friday. “With more than 50,000 [centres] having been established, one third of the target has been met. This has led to improved access to affordable primary healthcare services for more than 25 crore people,” said Harsh Vardhan, Union minister of health and family welfare.

The 50,025 operational AB-HWCs spread across 678 districts include 27,890 sub health centres, 18,536 primary health centres and 3,599 urban primary health centres. Together, these centres have witnessed over 28.10 crore footfalls of which over 53% are women who sought care at these centres. More than 6.43 crore people have been screened for hypertension, 5.23 crore for diabetes and 6.14 crore people for cancers. About 1.0 crore people are being provided free drugs for treatment of hypertension and about 60 lakh for diabetes, the government said in a statement.

“This has been possible due to the joint efforts of the Centre and the states/UTs in planning, monitoring at all levels, standardization of processes, the flexibility for adaptation provided to the states/UTs, and building on the health systems created thus far,” Harsh Vardhan said.

The Union health ministry said that the HWCs have also helped in covid-19 management—in interventions such as risk communication, contact tracing, community surveillance and early identification of cases, and provisioning of non-covid essential health services for ensuring protection of vulnerable groups, such as the newborn, elderly and those with co-morbidities. Over 30 lakhs wellness sessions have been conducted at these centres including activities such as yoga, zumba, community walks, shirodhara, meditation, etc.

HWCs are also the backbone for the implementation of the health ministry's eSanjeevani platform which includes the eSanjeevani Patient-to-Doctor OPD and eSanjeevani-HWC which provides doctor-to-doctor teleconsultation services. “23,103 HWCs have started providing teleconsultation services to citizens. More than 7.5 lakh teleconsultations have already been conducted through these platforms,” the health minister said. The eSanjeevani-HWC was rolled out in November 2019. It is to be implemented in all the 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres in a 'hub and spoke' model, by December 2022. States need to set up dedicated 'hubs' in medical colleges and district hospitals to provide tele-consultation services to 'Spokes', i.e. health and wellness centres (HWC).

Ayushman Bharat was launched in 2018 with its twin pillars of health and wellness centers (HWCs) and Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) with bidirectional linkages between the two for providing the full range of services across the continuum of care. The first AB-HWC was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 14 April 2018 at Jhangla in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh. The centres Centers provide CPHC services to people and sustain the efforts for provision of reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child, adolescent and nutrition (RMNCHA+N) services and control of communicable diseases.

They also focus on disease prevention, especially for chronic and non-communicable diseases, wellness through community engagement and creating awareness about health lifestyles, appropriate nutrition and physical activities such as Yoga. The HWC team consists of a trained community health officer, one or two health workers and 5-8 Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHAs. This team has well defined tasks which intend to deliver public health functions and primary health care by bringing health-care services closer to the community.