Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Monday inaugurated the CM’s Amma Mini Clinic Scheme in Tamil Nadu. Each clinic will have a doctor, a nurse and an assistant. He said 2,000 clinics would be opened across the State.
He inaugurated around 200 clinics at Royapuram, Vyasarpadi and Mylapore in Chennai. The State has 1,851 primary health centres, and the mini clinics will be opened in places where there are no primary health centres and where a large number of poor people live.
In his address, Mr. Palaniswami said: “Across Tamil Nadu, one doctor, one nurse and one assistant will be employed in every Amma Mini Clinic so that the poor can seek treatment in the areas where they live. The places where the poor live in greater numbers will be identified for opening mini clinics...”
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He said poor families had to spend ₹100-₹200 on treatment from private facilities. “Amma Mini Clinic is a scheme to ensure that poor families don’t even have to bear that burden...,” he said.
These clinics will function from 8 a.m. to noon and from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. They will check temperature, oxygen levels, blood pressure, haemoglobin levels and blood sugar levels and test urine samples.
“The Amma’s (Jayalalithaa’s) government has provided medical services to rural poor across Tamil Nadu by setting up 254 primary health centres and upgrading the facilities at 166 primary health centres with 30 beds and scan facilities. Based on the requests from people, government hospitals and primary health centres are being upgraded. As many as 16.17 lakh beneficiaries have received baby-care kits at a cost of ₹219 crore. Besides, ₹4,000 is being given to pregnant women under the Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy Maternity Benefit Scheme.”
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He said: “9.69 lakh people have been provided with medical consultation through the ‘104’ scheme, while 902 new ambulances have been pressed into service under the 108 Emergency Ambulance Scheme, benefiting close to 46.8 lakh persons, including 11.26 lakh pregnant women. Super Speciality facilities have been set up at the Madurai, Thanjavur and Tiruchi government medical colleges at a cost of ₹150 crore with accident and emergency care units. The government has spent ₹190 crore on the estaablishment of ‘Linear Accelerator’ facilities for cancer treatment at 10 government hospitals, enabling the poor to receive as good medical care as that can be had from private hospitals.”
Mr. Palaniswami said 7.62 lakh camps had been held under the ‘Mobile Hospital’ scheme, benefiting close to 6.30 crore people, and 67, 077 people have benefited from the Amma Master Health Check Up Scheme. “The Adyar Cancer Institute has been upgraded at a cost of ₹120 crore. Four cancer treatment zones have been created in Tamil Nadu at a cost of ₹59 crore. Government hospitals have been provided with 56 CT scan machines, 22 MRI scan machines, 18 catheterization laboratories and 530 dialysis equipment at a cost of ₹300 crore,” he said.
Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam said, “We have succeeded in bring down the number of COVID-19 cases from over 6,000 cases a day to over 1,000 cases a day. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has praised the efforts of Amma’s government in getting the pandemic under control. Ever since the disease emerged in China, Amma’s government took all precautions and declared it an ‘infectious disease’ under the Tamil Nadu Public Health Act and released guidelines under the Epidemic Diseases Act.”
“So far, 228 COVID-19 testing centres have been created...,” he said.