Davos: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy explained how his Government is reaching out to the people even at the micro-level and how his Government overcomes the challenges it has been facing post bifurcation. YS Jagan explained that the State conducted house-to-house surveys 44 times during the Covid-19 pandemic and followed the policy of tracing, testing and treating, thus curbing the mortality rate at 0.63%, which is lower than the national average of 1.21%.

On the second day of the WEF annual summit in Davos, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy participated in a group discussion on Future-Proofing Health Systems. He explained the AP’s model in the group discussion that at the micro-level, we have taken village with a population of 2K as a unit and set up village clinics. Next, we picked a mandal (block) with a population of 30K as a unit and set up two Primary Health Centres (PHCs) with four doctors.

Of them, two are assigned four to five villages depending on the size. They visit the villages in ambulances and render dedicated healthcare service to villagers. This way they connect with the locals and become their family doctors. He said that at the macro-level, district and area hospitals, besides teaching hospitals, take care of curative medicine. To address the issue of critical care, in addition to the existing 11 teaching hospitals, 16 more hospitals will be coming up in the State, taking each Lok Sabha constituency as a unit, thereby ensuring equitable distribution of tertiary healthcare, Jagan explained.

Referring to the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, he said that the pandemic was an eye-opener and taught us quite a few lessons. We did everything we could do. Being a newly-formed State, we had our own constraints. We did not have big cities like Hyderabad, Bengaluru or Chennai, nor did we have super-specialty hospitals but still we did our best in containing the virus spread and keeping the mortality rate very low. We have a robust delivery mechanism in place with 42K health workers constantly monitoring the situation at the micro-level. Despite the difficulties, we pushed through and allocated $2 billion and are working towards developing medical infrastructure in the State, he added.

Speaking on policies, practices and partnerships adapted and scaled in health systems to build resilience and ensure uninterrupted care even in times of crisis. YS Jagan explained that the State conducted house-to-house surveys 44 times during the Covid-19 pandemic and followed the policy of tracing, testing and treating, thus curbing the mortality rate at 0.63%, which is lower than the national average of 1.21%.

Pointing out that availability, accessibility and affordability are key to get an efficient healthcare system; he said the State has been implementing YSR Aarogyasri, which has provided treatment free of cost to over 25 lakh people in the last three years. Of the total 1.54 crore households in the State, 1.44 crore have received Aarogyasri cards. As a measure to cover more people under the scheme, the annual income limit was reduced to 5 lakh per annum.  At the national level, Ayushman Bharat, an insurance scheme for States, is available but it covers only 1K procedures while we have widened the scope of Aarogyasri by including 2,446 procedures, he added.