COVID-19 surge: States working towards rolling out special home isolation OPDs

Under this scheme, patients can be screened remotely for the pandemic by final year MBBS students, says Health Ministry.

Some States were working towards rolling out special home isolation OPDs wherein the patients would be screened for COVID-19, and for remote screening purposes States were planning to engage final year MBBS students, said a Health Ministry statement on Thursday.

While the final list of States implementing this scheme has not been released yet, the Ministry said that owing to the increasing load of cases, in a few States eSanjeevani OPD was being used round the clock.

eSanjeevani consultations

Tamil Nadu is the first to record over 10 lakh consultations on eSanjeevani.

The Ministry of Defence too had roped in veterans of the Armed Forces Medical Services to provide their services to the public in selected States, said the Ministry.

In around a little over one year, eSanjeevani had served more than 50 lakh (more than half a crore) patients.

“The patient-to-doctor remote consultation service was rolled out in April 2020 when the OPDs in the country were closed during the first lockdown. The eSanjeevani initiative is operational in 31 States/Union Territories and daily, around 40,000 patients across the country are using this contactless and risk-free modality of healthcare service delivery,” said the Ministry.

Rollout of NationalOPDs

“At a centre in Mohali, the creators of eSanjeevani are working towards adding another innovative feature in eSanjeevaniOPD that will enable the rollout of NationalOPDs on eSanjeevaniOPD. These NationalOPDs will enable doctors to offer remote health services to patients in any part of the country. This will, to some extent, help in addressing the challenges like shortage and uneven distribution of doctors and specialists in various regions of the country,” it noted.

Leading 10 States in terms of adoption (number of consultations) of eSanjeevani are Tamil Nadu (10,44,446), Karnataka (9,36,658), Uttar Pradesh (8,42,643), Andhra Pradesh (8,35,432), Madhya Pradesh (2,50,135), Gujarat (2,40,422), Bihar (1,53,957), Kerala (1,27,562), Maharashtra (1,27,550) and Uttarakhand (1,03,126).