222 Electronic Urban Primary Healthcare Centres to be opened in Andhra Pradesh

Tirupati: Health minister Kameni Srinivas on Saturday inaugurated Andhra Pradesh's Second Electronic Urban Primary Healthcare Centre (eUPHC) here on Saturday in the presence of officials from the state government and Apollo Hospitals. He said 222 more eUPHCs will be launched across the state in the next few months.

In a first of its kind initiative in the country, to leverage the benefits of digitalisation of healthcare, the government of AP undertook an initiative to upgrade the Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHC) into eUPHCs through a well-thought out PPP model enabling access to specialist doctors through telemedicine and diagnostics in the local neighbourhoods itself.

Further on, Apollo Hospitals, one of Asia's most trusted integrated healthcare providers, extended its commitment to rural and remote healthcare by providing services at 164 such eUPHCs across nine districts in AP to manage and operate for a period of three years along with the government of AP through a well drawn tender.

“As per the directives in National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) it is imperative to meet healthcare needs of the urban population with the focus on urban poor, by making available to them essential primary healthcare services and reducing their out of pocket expenses for treatment. With the launch of e-UPHCs, we would be able to serve families which are below and close to the poverty line thereby catering to basic and advanced healthcare needs of close to 50 per cent of the urban/semi urban population of the state of Andhra Pradesh,” said the minister.

The eUPHCs are enabled with technology to provide speciality consultations through Telemedicine for select specialities, and will provide laboratory investigations, primary healthcare services through general practitioners and nurses, the health minister noted.

Speaking on the occasion, Vikram Thaploo, CEO- Apollo Hospitals said, "This initiative is a novel way to cater to the ever increasing healthcare needs of our population. Through this initiative, which is part of Apollo's Rural Connect initiative, the government aims to serve 13.2 million people of Andhra Pradesh in three years, which is approximately 20 per cent of the total population of Andhra Pradesh.