Extension Health Clinic: "Reaching the Unreached."

Abstract

The healthcare services should be delivered to the community's doorstep with their participation at an affordable cost to achieve "Health for All." The healthcare services should also be delivered to the vulnerable population to achieve "Health for All." The three-tier government healthcare delivery services can be complemented with the community-level healthcare services through the Extension Health Clinics (EHC). This study describes the EHC activities of a tertiary healthcare institute in Eastern India. Utilizing resources from the local government healthcare facilities with available resources and a workforce from medical colleges should complement the resources or logistics available at the community level. Vulnerable populations, such as residents of slums, can benefit from achieving an improved health status through this EHC activity. The EHCs provide essential healthcare services and services such as domiciliary care for bedridden patients and referral and follow-up. We conducted EHCs in urban slums for more than two years, encountering 2521 EHC beneficiaries in the last six months, including first-time visits and follow-ups. The mean age of the patients was 32.97 years (SD 20.72 years). Females majorly attended EHCs, with most diagnoses being comprised of non-communicable diseases and communicable diseases such as type-2 diabetes mellitus hypertension and upper respiratory tract infection. The EHCs are helping us to provide quality patient care at the doorstep of an urban slum community to the unreached and unattended ones. It also helps to strengthen undergraduate and postgraduate teaching-learning activities.