Chennai, The Greater Chennai Corporation has begun the construction of 140 urban health and wellness centres (UHWC) which will be set up at all wards of the civic body.

These centres will function parallel to the existing urban primary health centres in the city.

According to information available from the Greater Chennai Corporation, 98 new buildings will be constructed for these health and wellness centres.

However, the remaining centres will function from existing old buildings.

The UHWC will be set up at a cost of Rs 88 crore under the Central government's Ayushman Bharat -- Comprehensive Primary Healthcare scheme.

The services of the UHWC include providing care in pregnancy, childbirth, neonatal care and infant health services.

The UHWC will use its IT services to have a proper database of population registry for health.

The Central government has directed the states to set up a wellness room with a robust IT setup for creating a health database of patients visiting the UHWC.

The Greater Chennai Corporation has begun the recruitment of health staff for the new centres.

Each UHWC will have five staff, including medical doctor, sanitary nurses, multi-purpose health workers and two hospital workers.

The corporation officials also said the working hours of the UHWC will be from 4 p.m. till evening as currently the urban primary health centres are functioning from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.