Haryana AIIMS to have India’s biggest cancer centre: Azad

Jhajjar (Haryana), Nov 24 (IANS) Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Gulam Nabi Azad Saturday announced that a National Cancer Institute (NCI) would come up in the AIIMS−2 campus at Badhsa village in Haryana, which would be an even bigger facility than the Tata Cancer Institute, Mumbai.

A National Cardio Care Centre (NCCC) would also be set up in this institute, he said.

The health minister was speaking after inaugurating the outreach OPD of AIIMS Badhsa village, 40 km from New Delhi, in Haryana’s Jhajjar district.

He said the proposed NCI would have 600 beds in the 2,100−bedded AIIMS−2, and would be the biggest cancer institute in the country, bigger than even the Tata Cancer Institute in Mumbai.

The AIIMS−2 campus is being set up over an area of 300 acres, provided free of cost by the Haryana government.

Azad said the new facility would serve as an alternate OPD of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Delhi.

Azad said the new facilities would serve not only the people of Haryana, but also other states.

“The waiting period of OPD at Delhi AIIMS would be decreased considerably, and people from Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala would happily come to Badhsa. This is the first OPD where free medicines would be provided,” Azad said.

The outreach OPD comprises of the departments of general medicine, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, ophthalmology, ENT, anaesthesia and general surgery.

The entire OPD operations will be computerized from registration to prescriptions, and patient records would be maintained electronically, Azad said.

Azad said that heart and cancer diseases were increasing in the country, and a need was felt for national−level institutes to tackle these.

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that the highway from New Delhi to Badhsa would be four−laned, to enable people to reach AIIMS−2 smoothly.

IANS 2012-11-24 22:30:39