Civic body plans first medical college

‘With you from birth to death’, thus claim MCD officials for the services they offer to Delhiites, ranging from issuing birth certificates to building roads, and for looking after areas as diverse as streetlights, public health and even crematoriums. Nivedita Khandekar reports.

‘With you from birth to death’, thus claim MCD officials for the services they offer to Delhiites, ranging from issuing birth certificates to building roads, and for looking after areas as diverse as streetlights, public health and even crematoriums.

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Now the MCD plans to start a 200-seat medical college-first for the civic body-as part of its grand ‘Medicity’ project. The project will be developed under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model to bridge the financial crunch and yet offer super specialty health services, advanced diagnostic laboratories and trauma centre apart from a medical college, a nursing college and a pharmacy college.

Both the nursing and pharmacy colleges are scheduled to be completed in three years and will have 200 seats each. The medical college, on the other hand, will come up in five years.

“That’s not all. The Medicity project also includes a 1,000-bed free-of-cost general hospital and renovation of the TB hospital,” Dr V.K. Monga, chairman of MCD’s health committee, told HT.

The facility spread over 80 acres of land will come up at the existing Rajan Babu Institute of Pulmonary Medicine and Tuberculosis at Kingsway Camp in north Delhi.

The site was selected as much of its area had been lying unutilised. To a query as to how the cash-strapped civic body will afford the ‘super specialty’ status, Monga said, “Except for offering land, we are not investing any money.”

The civic body already has an established chain of hospitals, polyclinics and dispensaries throughout the city. So what was the need for a super specialty facility?

Explained a senior MCD official, “It is no secret that the corporation faces acute financial crunch to maintain healthcare standards. But the people of Delhi do deserve a cost-intensive modernisation initiative.”