Mohalla Clinics

Mohalla Clinics are primary health centres in the union territory of New Delhi in India, that offer a basic package of essential health services including medicines, diagnostics, and consultation free of cost.[1] Mohalla in Hindi means neighborhood or community. These clinics serve as the first point of contact for the population, offer timely services, and reduce the load of referrals to secondary and tertiary health facilities in the state.[2] Mohalla Clinics was first set up by the Aam Admi Party government in 2015, and as of 2020, 450[3] such clinics have been set up across the city and served more than 16.24 million residents.[4][5] The Government has kept a target of setting up 1000 such clinics in the city before 2020 Delhi Legislative Assembly Elections. According to the World Health Organization data for the year 2015, more than 65% of the population in India paid for health from their own pockets. The Hindu, meanwhile reported in 2017 that only 17% of people in the country have health insurance.[6][7] In a country with one of the largest out-of-pocket health expenditures and least coverage of health insurance in the world, the free health services offered by Mohalla Clinics helps to reduce the financial burden on low-income households by saving travel costs and lost wages.

In December 2017, India's renowned cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Health, Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, visited a mohalla clinic in Todapur, Delhi. He was amazed by the healthcare facilities provided to the general public by the Delhi Government.[8] In a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, in the capacity as chair of The Elders, an international non-governmental organisation of independent global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, and former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan commended Mohalla Clinic project.[9] The praise for the mohalla clinic project also came from the former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland at the Prince Mahidol Award Conference at Bangkok, Thailand after a presentation by Delhi health minister Satyendra Kumar Jain.[10]

The Straits Times, an English-language daily broadsheet newspaper based in Singapore finds Mohalla Clinics to be high-tech where results of most of the tests are known within two minutes and are uploaded onto an IT cloud for access by patients and their doctors on their smartphones and the clinic's tablets.[11]

Meanwhile, in a report published by The Washington Post, it suggests "It may well be time for America to build mohalla clinics in its cities". The report also features Swasthya Slate, a $600 medical device for instant diagnosis developed by Kanav Kahol, a biomedical engineer and researcher at Arizona State University’s department of biomedical informatics.[12]