E-Paper
J’khand govt plans cancer day care, radiation therapy facilities in 6 hospitals
Jharkhand plans to establish cancer day care and radiation facilities in six hospitals via public-private partnerships to improve access to treatment.
Prefer HTon Google
The Jharkhand government is working on a plan to set up cancer day care and radiation facilities in six state-run hospitals, officials said on Saturday.
A detailed proposal will soon be prepared to launch such facilities on a public-private partnership basis across all five medical colleges in the state and the Ranchi district headquarters hospital additional chief secretary (health) Ajoy Kumar Singh held a high-level meeting with officials to take the plan forward, officials said.
During the meeting, Singh asserted that cancer patients should receive better and accessible treatment at district level so they would not have to travel far for care.
“The need for a modern linear accelerator (LINAC) for radiation therapy was also discussed during the meeting. Those present noted that providing radiation services requires not only the machines but also trained personnel, such as radiation specialists, technicians, and medical physicists,” an official who attended the meeting said.
During the meeting, officials identified the shortage of medical physicists in the state as a major challenge in this sector. A plan to categorise medical colleges into two groups for the proposed radiation centres.
“The health facilities at Jamshedpur, Dhanbad and Dumka will be in one group, while Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Palamu will be in the other,” an official said.
The officials explored the possibility of arranging machinery and technical manpower for these centres through the PPP mode. A control and command centre will be set up at Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) to centrally monitor the cancer day care centres.
