The AAP dispensation has been expanding and upgrading health infrastructure and the footfall at OPDs at all government hospitals in Delhi has doubled to six crore in the last five years, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday.
He was addressing a gathering here after inaugurating open-heart surgery and other facilities at Rajiv Gandhi Super-Specialty Hospital in east Delhi.
The chief minister also said that this huge inflow of patients is a "big challenge" for the government, but "we will scale up our facilities".
"The Rajiv Gandhi Super-Specialty Hospital has state-of-the-art facilities that are no less than at any private hospitals. We could never think that the poor people would be getting such a comfortable environment," Kejriwal said.
Other facilities include, 16-bed state-of the-art ICU; OT complex; heptatoblery, bariatric and metabolic surgery centres, gastroenterology, officials said.
Empasising that the AAP government has upgraded existing hospitals and building new facilities, he said the footfall in OPDs at all government hospitals in Delhi has increased in the last five years.
"Five years ago, the footfall in OPDs at all the government hospitals here stood at 3 crore, which has now gone up to 6 crore," he claimed.
"We recently constructed a school in Rohini which has a capacity of 900 children and, 750 out of those, who have moved from nearby private schools, which is a matter of pride for the Delhi government. But further expansion of schools to include a huge number of students is also a big challenge for us," he said.
The same is the case with government hospitals, and facilities are being expanded, he said.
"We hope in future, people will repose greater faith in government hospitals, and move from private facilities to our hospitals," Kejriwal said.
The chief minister also said that he witnessed the construction of this hospital when he worked at Sundar Nagari near it, from 2000-2010.
"The first OPD began at this hospital in 2008, after which several OPDs were opened in 2013. The IPD began in 2016 after the formation of our government in the state. Several other facilities have been coming up thereafter," he said.
Health Minister Satyendar Jain spoke about the government's three-tier health system of the Delhi government, and emphasised that in a developed nation, health and education are offered free.
"First tier is the mohalla clinics, and there are more than 300 such clinics in Delhi, with all several diagnostic tests and medicines available. On the secondary level, there are 125 polyclinics in Delhi, out of which 26 are functional with specialists available inside the clinics. On the tertiary level, there are multi-specialty hospitals and super-specialty hospitals," he said.
The Rajiv Gandhi hospital is one of the super-specialty hospitals where major diseases are diagnosed and treated.
"The hospital has more than 200 beds and is one of the best super-specialty hospitals in the city. Conducting 500 angiography tests and 150 angioplasties within one month is a huge achievement for the hospital," Jain said.
Jain said that he wants Delhi to be a guiding lighthouse for all the states so that India can be amongst the most progressive nations in the world.
He said, the AAP government's aim is to make Delhi a "lighthouse of development" which can be serve as a guide for other parts of the country.
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