Works on Rs.100 crore super specialty centre commence

A super specialty government treating centre in the district providing low cost quality healthcare has been a long-felt but elusive need. Work has just commenced on the Rs.100-crore worth super specialty centre to come up as a seven-storey structure at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital in Tiruchi.

The proposal to establish the centre at Tiruchi GH attached to K.A.P. Viswanatham Government Medical College was announced by the Chief Minister in August 2011. The centre would be established as 300-bed block housing 10 super speciality departments including cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, neurology, neurosurgery, nephrology, urology, plastic surgery, paediatric surgery, and medical and surgical gastroenterology.

According to Public Works Department sources who spoke to The Hindu, the centre would come up as a ground plus six floor structure covering an area of approximately 3-lakh square feet. The estimated cost of construction is Rs.53.97 crore. Subsequent to the government order issued in January 2012 sanctioning funds, the medical works department of PWD has taken up the construction work. The contract work was assigned to a Namakkal-based developer. The tentative date of completion has been fixed at May 2014, but sources say work would be completed much earlier.

Health minster V.S. Vijay inspected the site in August but construction was delayed due to various reasons including the location being close to the mortuary. A high-rise wall would be erected between the mortuary and the new buildings. A direct entrance from the main road linking both the super specialty centre and the maternity and child welfare centre was nearing completion, Dean, A.Karthikeyan, told The Hindu. More than ten structures are said to have been demolished for the new centre. The upgrade of the institution has been deferred in the past. A host of political bodies and consumer activists have been taking up the cause repeatedly. A Rs.100-crore Central government project to upgrade the hospital on a par with All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, was moved to Salem.