Poor households across the national capital continue to struggle with inadequate access to healthcare services despite 38 public and private super-speciality hospitals and 517 Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics, a patients’ rights group has said ahead of the Delhi elections.

The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA), a network of physicians and patients’ rights advocates, has said low public investment in healthcare, insufficient primary care infrastructure and an unregulated private healthcare sector are exacerbating inequities in access to healthcare services.

“Delhi’s rich have access to state-of-the-art healthcare services, but the poor — nearly half the city’s population — continue to struggle for even basics,” Vandana Prasad, a community paediatrician and public health professional, said in a media release issued by the JSA.

The JSA has released what it has described as a “People’s Health Manifesto”, a set of demands calling on political parties to increase public health spending, raise by 10-fold the counts of mohalla clinics and regulate costs charged by private hospitals.

“Delhi’s healthcare sector needs to depart from the current dangerous and expensive reliance on the private sector, including through public-private partnerships,” the JSA said.

“Delhi boasts 38 super-speciality hospitals in the public and private sector but these facilities are often inaccessible to the vast majority of working-class people,” said Richa Chintan, co-convener of the JSA. “But we need a stronger and robust public health system.”

The national capital also has 58 primary urban health centres, 30 polyclinics and
167 allopathic dispensaries among its public health infrastructure.

The JSA also released an analysis by health economist and JSA member Indranil Mukhopadhyay indicating that the geographical clustering of health services, including the 517 mohalla clinics, exacerbates inequities through fewer facilities in underserved or economically disadvantaged areas.

Estimates suggest that between two and four million people in Delhi live in slums and lack easy access to healthcare services. A JSA member said the mohalla clinics typically work only during the mornings, which prevents many working class people from accessing them.

The JSA, in its manifesto, has demanded the establishment of at least 4,000 mohalla clinics, eight times more than those currently functioning. The existing mohalla clinics also face “enormous shortages of medicines and supplies and do not provide comprehensive care covering broad components such as preventive healthcare and surveillance”, it said.

The JSA has pointed out that despite increased public spending on health over the past few years, the current level remains 0.8 per cent of the GDP against the desired spending level of 2.5 per cent.