Gurugram to get six new Ayushman health centres

In what is bound to be a shot in the arm for Gurugram’s public health, six Ayushman Arogya Mandir centres will be set up in the city within five months. According to Yadav, Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Gurugram, the centres will strengthen health monitoring and research across urban and rural regions while preparing residents for handling pandemics and health crises.

Each facility will operate with three staff members—a medical officer, a nurse, and a support staff member—catering to between 15,000 and 20,000 people. The Haryana Health Department is currently undertaking discussions with private healthcare organisations to support the development of these centres. The centres will also share the patient burden of secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities. Their location and population coverage will be flexible, depending on population densities and the presence of vulnerable and marginalised population sub-groups. The sites proposed for these centres are DLF Phase 1, Sector 27, Sukhrali, Sector 33, Sector 56, and Samastpur.

These six facilities mark the beginning of a larger initiative, with plans to expand to 40 centres over the next two years. The new establishments will work in conjunction with current urban PHCs.

The centres will specifically target the city’s vulnerable sections, with a strong emphasis on enhancing public health programmes. Their primary focus will be on serving slum dwellers, at-risk populations, and communities with restricted access to public health services.

Each centre will have a minimum of three to four rooms with basic facilities, including clinical services, specialist services such as medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, ophthalmology, and dermatology; teleconsultation; epidemic surveillance; referral to secondary/tertiary care facilities; disease surveillance and outbreak management; screening for communicable and non-communicable diseases; community outreach/immunisation services; and special outreach camps.

“We will have six such centres by April. These will strengthen public health surveillance, ensure timely reporting of health emergencies, and promote community engagement to ensure universal reach of health services. They will also facilitate smooth access to polyclinics, providing specialist services and minimising out-of-pocket expenditures of people,” said the CMO.

Urban local bodies have been asked by the Health Department to suggest government buildings or any other unused governmental space in their jurisdiction that can be utilised for setting up these centres.