People in Uttar Pradesh would soon be able to get medical consultancy and medicine near their homes with additional over 700 urban health and wellness centres (UHWCs) set to come up across the state in phases.
“The process has begun. We have identified the places where UHWCs will be opened and we will issue advertisement to hire places in those areas,” said district health education officer, Lucknow, Yogesh Raghuvanshi. As many as 108 urban health and wellness centres will be opened in Lucknow in phases.
At these centres, 14 diagnostic facilities will be provided to patients. Also, test for cervical cancer detection will be there once the medical staff is trained to conduct it. The UHWCs will also be providing tele-medicine facilities in which experts sitting at premier institutes will give consultancy for complicated medical cases.
“If the experts advise a test not conducted by UHWCs, the sample collection facility for the particular test will be provided by UHWCs,” said the order issued to the chief medical officers across the state.
According to health department officials, the selection of place for setting up UHWCs had been done on the basis of vulnerability assessment and mapping of the urban areas, slums/vulnerable areas and areas with no primary health care facility.
Explaining how these wellness centres will help, Dr Abhishek Shukla, secretary general, Association of International Doctors, said, “UHWCs are being opened in areas with no primary health facility. Hence, the accessibility to medical services of people in these areas will increase and they won’t have to travel to district hospitals for basic medical advice and diagnosis, thereby reducing load on bigger hospitals.”
The UHWCs will have an outpatient department (OPD) room, another room for vaccination, a waiting and registration area, one wellness room and a separate day care room. Each room size has been defined. For example, the OPD will be a 100-sq feet room and waiting room and registration 210 sq feet. The UHWCs are being opened in districts with over 50,000 urban population.
