Can the Delhi Government’s ‘Mohalla’ clinic overcome its challenges and provide quality health services to the urban poor population?
Abstract
The ‘Mohalla’ clinics were set up by the Delhi state (provincial) government in India in 2014 to provide basic health services to people of Delhi city and its vicinity, especially targeting the urban poor. The Mohalla clinics are staffed by a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist and a laboratory technician and they provide basic health services including immunisation, family planning and counselling services. The Mohalla clinic program had a good start and its operation was cost-effective; however, it is still struggling to increase its coverage to entire Delhi state as it had planned. The program got caught up in the central government and state government bureaucratic tussle, especially on the issue of acquiring land for setting up such clinics and on the implementation front due to the lack of operational plan and collaboration with the government line agencies. Thus, despite political will and funding a potentially viable urban health program may have got stuck in the operational procedural complexities and political-bureaucratic tussle. This commentary article tries to discuss the challenges faced by the Delhi government’s ‘Mohalla’ clinics and a possible way forward to scale it up as a model urban health program.
Keywords: Access; Delhi government; health services; ‘Mohalla’ clinics; urban health
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The author(s) retain the copyright and the full publishing right without restriction under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) which allows readers to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercially, provided the work is properly attributed. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Author(s) grant the non-exclusive publishing right to the Journal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (JKAHS). The publishing rights include the rights to publish, reproduce, distribute, include in indexes or search databases or other media in print or online. The JKAHS may require revisions to the manuscript before acceptance for publication or may choose not to publish it based on the judgement of the editors. Further, JKAHS might retract, withdraw, or publish a correction or other notice after publication, if such publication would be inconsistent with the good publication practices and associated guidelines set forth by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).
More information about the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License can be found in the webpage of Creative Commons (CC) by following the link provided below: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
