Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal to get AIIMS-like institutes: Azad

Two more premier medical institutes on the lines of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences will be set up - in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh - in addition to the six such institutes that are under construction, union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said Friday.

Informing the Rajya Sabha, the minister said the government has approved the proposal to set up the two new institutes under the second phase of the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY).

The estimated cost of each institute is Rs.823 crore, he said.

He said in March 2006 the government had approved the first phase of setting up AIIMS-like institutes under which six new ones were to be constructed.

The aim for setting up such medical facilities is to correct the regional imbalance in the availability of affordable and reliable healthcare services. The six institutes are coming up in Patna (Bihar), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Bhubaneswar (Orissa), Jodhpur (Rajasthan) and Rishikesh (Uttarakhand).

He said the institutes in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh will have a 960-bedded hospital each as well as 40 specialty or super-specialty disciplines.

Keeping on the lines of the AIIMS set up, the eight new facilities will also have medical and nursing colleges.

"The medical colleges will have 100 postgraduate seats, besides facilities for imparting PG/doctoral courses in various disciplines, and also nursing colleges conforming to nursing council norms," he added.

About the six institutes, Azad said construction of the housing complex for the medical staff has begun and would be completed in 2009-2010. "The hospitals and medical colleges are likely to get completed by the end of 2011," he added.

Last updated on Jul 10^th, 2009 at 18:25 pm IST--IANS