To provide access to quality primary care for the marginalised population in Mumbai slums, non-profit disaster relief and humanitarian aid organisation AmeriCares India is planning to expand Mumbai mobile medical clinic programme with a target of 12 mobile clinics in operation by 2016.
Currently, seven fully equipped mobile medical clinics bring healthcare to poor families in over 130 slum locations across 13 wards in Mumbai, giving free treatment to nearly 600 patients everyday.
AmeriCares provides immediate response to emergency medical needs and supports long-term humanitarian assistance programmes globally.
Informs Shripad Desai, managing director, AmeriCares India, "Our goal is to eventually have one van in all wards with slums which would cover more than 50 per cent of the slum population. AmeriCares Mobile Medical Clinic programme has managed more than 160,000 unique patient visits. To ensure continuity of care in a mobile clinic programme that treats a transient population, the AmeriCares clinics use cloud based electronic medical records (EMRs). The EMR helps document each patient’s visit and health status and care, including immunizations and medications."
The programme involves using mobile clinic as a base with the clinic doctor conducting patient exams and diagnoses. Based on which, the pharmacy assistant dispenses over the counter and prescription medicines. The clinic staff can also refer patients to available health services when a diagnosis is required at a public hospital. Each clinic also offers educational sessions, including group health promotion and one-on-one patient counseling with special focus on hypertension, diabetes and maternal care.
Currently, three Mobile Medical Clinics are also equipped with a portable pathology laboratory that enables testing for blood haemoglobin to detect anaemia, blood sugar to detect diabetes and also assess end-organ damage due to diabetes and hypertension. Stocked with quality medicines and staffed by a doctor, health worker, pharmacy assistant and patient registrar, each mobile clinic visits 19 locations twice a month, a regular schedule that slum residents can depend on.
In 2011, AmeriCares introduced the Mobile Medical Clinic (MMC) programme to provide quality primary care to the marginalised population in the slums of Mumbai. Since the launch of the programme, AmeriCares has invested more than Rs. 3 Crore in this programme, contributed through grants and donations by corporates and foundations. The deworming medicines are one of 120 different medicines the AmeriCares mobile clinics provide to the patients. In AmeriCares 2014 fiscal year, the clinics dispensed more than 2,11,000 prescriptions for slum patients, more than double those filled in FY 2013.