Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Sudip Bandopadhyay, said here on Saturday that the proposed AIIMS-like medical institute for West Bengal would come up at Kalyani, about 50 km north of Kolkata.
“We will set up a medical institute on the lines of AIIMS at Kalyani in West Bengal soon,” Bandopadhyay said while inaugurating a two-day conference on healthcare organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.
Even though such a hospital was proposed to be set up at Raigaunj in North Bengal during the 12th Plan, the Trinamool Congress-led State Government requested the Centre to set up the facility at Kalyani (Nadia), close to the State Capital.
The minister said the State would also get a second unit of Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute at Rajarhat, located in the eastern fringes of Kolkata.
Apart from West Bengal, such medical institutes were proposed to be built up in Odisha, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan initially, he added
Fund Crunch
Healthcare industry professionals focussed on the issue of inadequate financing ailing the health sector. “Organising funding continues to be a problem. Public-private partnership models have not really been crystallised in healthcare so far,” Devlina Chakraborty, CEO and Director — Medical Services, Artemis Health Institute, Gurgaon, said.
Dilip Samaddar, CEO of the Kolkata-based Peerless Hospital and B K Roy Research Institute, said he found it difficult to get the working capital. His hospital project, with a long gestation period, took nearly seven years since inception to break even.
Chakraborty also urged the Government to lower import duties on health equipment to help private hospitals provide inexpensive treatment options.