| Information Portal launched | ||
Guwahati, Jan. 11 : Health and family welfare minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today announced that besides a state-of-the-art cancer hospital in the city, two cancer diagnostic centres will also be set up at Mangaldoi and Sivasagar. “Chief minister Tarun Gogoi will lay the foundation stone of the 200-bed cancer hospital near Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) on February 1,” Sarma said. He said the government had sanctioned Rs 85 crore for the proposed hospital. Of the amount, Rs 50 crore will be spent on developing infrastructure and Rs 35 crore will be used to procure a positron emission tomography (PET) scan machine. A PET scan machine will help doctors diagnose cancer in its early stages. Sarma said the hospital is scheduled to be completed within 18 months. The latest MRI machine and two linear accelerators — a precision-based radiation therapy targeting only malignant cells and sparing healthy ones — will be installed at the hospital. “Our objective is to provide maximum service to the cancer patients here so that they need not travel outside the state for treatment,” he added. He said the government would also introduce postgraduate courses in oncology at the GMCH. “We are going to set up two regional-level cancer diagnostic centres at Mangaldoi and Sivasagar so that the people do not have to come all the way to Guwahati to diagnose the disease,” he said. Sarma also launched a portal — the Indian Cancer Care Network (www.cancercare.net.in) — and an information centre of the network at the GMCH. The portal is multilingual, in Assamese, Bengali and Hindi. The network is dedicated to helping patients and providing them information on cancer care in the country. The portal is an initiative of ClearWin Technologies, North East Clinical Excellence Foundation, Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters and Deepsikha Cancer Care. J.B. Sarmah, the founding trustee and member of the executive council of the North East Clinical Excellence Forum, said the portal would provide all information about cancer care in the leading hospitals in the country. Some such hospitals include the Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai, All India Institute Medical Sciences in New Delhi, Apollo Hospitals Group, B. Borooah Cancer Institute in Guwahati, Christian Medical College in Vellore, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Mumbai, Prince Aly Khan Hospital in Mumbai, Sri Sathya Sai Institute in Puttaparthy and Tata Memorial Institute in Mumbai. He said the patients would get all relevant information like treatment costs, travelling costs and hospital costs at the portal. “We will also give them post-treatment help like offering video-conferencing with doctors or hospitals they had visited,” he added. |
Cancer centres for districts
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Sinlung
