Mukhyamantri Shahari Slum Swasthya Yojana

What is Mukhyamantri Shahari Slum Swasthya Yojana?

Mukhyamantri Shahari Slum Swasthya Yojana is Chhattisgarh's urban slum health scheme, run by the Health and Family Welfare Department with the Urban Administration and Development Department and the municipal bodies. Instead of asking slum residents to travel to a hospital, the scheme sends a fully equipped mobile medical unit into the basti and holds a free health camp there. It is commonly referred to in Hindi as the Mukhyamantri Shahari Slum Swasthya Yojana or simply the slum health scheme.

The scheme was launched on 1 November 2020, Chhattisgarh's state formation day, and was expanded across the state's urban local bodies over the following years. It was conceived as the town-and-city counterpart of the rural Mukhyamantri Haat-Bazar Clinic Yojana, which had been running since October 2019.

The problem it addresses

Urban slum households in Chhattisgarh are overwhelmingly daily-wage households. For a construction worker, a vegetable vendor or a domestic worker, a trip to a government hospital costs a full day's earnings before a single rupee is spent on treatment, so minor illness is ignored until it becomes serious. Bringing the doctor to the settlement removes the wage loss, the travel cost and the queue in one step.

What does the mobile medical unit provide?

Each unit is equipped as a small outpatient department with a laboratory:

• Free consultation with an MBBS doctor at the camp.
• Up to about 41 types of laboratory test, free of cost. Reported tests include blood, urine, stool and sputum examinations and screening for tuberculosis, thyroid disorder, malaria and typhoid.
• Around 200 types of medicine, dispensed free by a pharmacist travelling with the unit.
• Diagnostic equipment on board, including blood pressure monitors, ECG machines and oxygen cylinders.
• Referral to an urban Primary Health Centre, civil hospital or district hospital where admission or specialist care is needed.

Each team is staffed with a doctor, a pharmacist for free medicine distribution, and a lab technician for the free tests, along with support staff.

How large is the scheme?

Deployment was set by the size of the city. The Chief Minister's direction was for three mobile medical teams in Raipur Municipal Corporation, two each in Bhilai and Korba, and one each in the other municipal corporations, with coverage subsequently extended across all 169 urban local bodies.

Later state reporting placed cumulative free medicine distribution at around 27 lakh people across the state's urban bodies, with more than 6 lakh patients given free pathology tests and more than 22 lakh given free medicines: figures that grow with each reporting year, so read them as scale rather than a current total.

What is the Dai Didi Clinic?

Alongside the main scheme, Chhattisgarh launched the Dai Didi Clinic on 19 November 2020 in Raipur, Bilaspur and Bhilai. These are mobile clinics staffed by women, a woman doctor and women paramedical staff: designed for women patients who will not attend a mixed camp. Early reporting recorded around 1,200 camps treating roughly 90,000 women across the three cities. The Dai Didi Clinic runs on the same free-treatment principle and is best thought of as a specialised arm of the slum health programme.

Who is eligible for Mukhyamantri Shahari Slum Swasthya Yojana?

You can be treated if:

• You are a permanent resident of Chhattisgarh.
• You live in an urban slum settlement in a municipal corporation, nagar palika or nagar panchayat covered by the scheme.
• You are present at the camp on the day the mobile medical unit visits your basti. That is the only real requirement.
• You are of any age, sex, caste or income level. The scheme imposes no such filter and asks for no income certificate.

Who cannot apply or is not eligible:

• The scheme cannot provide inpatient care. Patients needing admission, surgery, dialysis or intensive care are not treated at the camp and are referred to a hospital instead.
• Emergencies: chest pain, serious injury, obstetric emergency — should go straight to a hospital or be moved by the 108 ambulance rather than wait for the camp day.
• Residents of villages are outside this scheme; the rural equivalent is Mukhyamantri Haat-Bazar Clinic Yojana, which visits weekly haat bazars.
• The mobile unit does not issue disability, fitness or medico-legal certificates. Those come only from a designated government hospital.
• Settlements not on the mobile unit's notified route are not served until the municipal body adds them; that request goes to the ward office.

How to apply for treatment under the slum health scheme

Mukhyamantri Shahari Slum Swasthya Yojana has no application form and no eligibility approval. These are the steps a patient actually follows.

1. Find out your camp day. Ask your ward office, your Mitanin, or the Urban Community Organiser attached to your municipal body. Each unit works a fixed rotating route through the slums of its city, and camps are typically held in the morning window.
2. Attend the camp in your basti on that day, taking any old prescriptions, X-rays or test reports with you. Continuity matters most for tuberculosis, hypertension and diabetes patients.
3. Give your name at the registration point on the vehicle. The team maintains an outpatient register; a state mobile app has also been used for registration and camp schedules in some cities. There is no fee at any stage.
4. See the doctor and get your tests done. Results for the panel tests are given the same day where the test allows it.
5. Collect the prescribed medicines free from the pharmacist on the unit.
6. If referred, act on the referral. Keep the slip and take your Ayushman Bharat or state health card to the named hospital so admission is cashless.

Why patients miss out, and what to do about it

• You did not know the camp was coming. Ask the ward office for the monthly route sheet, and ask your Mitanin to inform the household in advance.
• Camp timings clash with work. Camps commonly run in the morning. Where the clash is systematic for a working-class settlement, raise it with the ward councillor and the municipal health officer; routes and timings are set locally and can be changed.
• Medicine not in stock. Take the written prescription to the nearest urban Primary Health Centre, where the same essential drug list applies.
• Test not on the unit's panel. The unit carries a fixed panel. Anything outside it is done at the civil or district hospital, still free.
• Your basti is not on the route. Apply through the ward office to have the settlement added; municipal bodies revise routes as slums are notified.
• Referral not honoured. Escalate to the hospital superintendent. A scheme referral is a government referral.

Where to get help and raise a grievance

• Health helpline 104: Chhattisgarh's health advice and grievance line.
• Ambulance 108 for emergencies.
• Ward office of your municipal corporation, nagar palika or nagar panchayat, for camp schedules and route requests.
• Chief Medical and Health Officer (CMHO) of the district for clinical and staffing complaints.
• Health and Family Welfare Department, Chhattisgarh: cghealth.nic.in.

Mukhyamantri Shahari Slum Swasthya Yojana is free at every step, consultation, tests and medicines alike. No fee may be charged, and there is no list to be added to, so nobody can charge you for "registration".