Chennai Corporation is set to improve free services for city residents on promoting public health and preventive medicine at primary care hospitals with 150 doctors from the Health and Family Welfare Department receiving orders to join the civic body.

“The permanent doctors will join urban primary health centres across all city zones in one or two weeks,” said an official of Chennai Corporation.

Previously, doctors in Chennai Corporation’s urban primary health centres were hired on a contract basis. The doctors left GCC hospitals in large numbers as the compensation was inadequate for those hired on contract. The permanent doctors will get a better pay. A posting in a hospital of a metropolitan city like Chennai is likely to be an attraction for many of the doctors, officials said.

Thousand Lights MLA Ezhilan Naganathan said: “The posting of new doctors will improve services at seven UPHCs in my Assembly constituency. A UPHC in my constituency registers around 15 to 20 outpatients every day. Many residents who have stopped visiting UPHCs will start coming because the new doctors will remain in the same hospital for at least three years. Patients have the tendency to follow the same doctor. The number of outpatients will increase. The infectious diseases management in the area will increase. Patient, doctors’ relationship will develop, with better services.”

Pointing to the need for need for better services, ward 88 councillor G.V.Nagavalli said residents were visiting the hospital in another ward because of the absence of UPHC in their ward. “The new UPHC for residents in Padi will be inaugurated shortly,” she said. Residents have demanded evening clinics in all the UPHC and health and wellness centres to improve free services.