'Centre to open 270 nursing schools'

Inaugurating Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer Centre at Narayana Hrudayalaya Health City on Saturday he said what is the use of creating white elephants (referring to multi super-specialty hospitals) when there is an acute shortage of doctors and paramedic staff.

The minister said that this year 4,000 additional medical seats will be allotted to both government and private medical colleges, which will be doubled in the future. He said that 270 additional nursing schools will be opened thereby providing training to 20,000 nurses every year.

There is an acute shortage of radiologists and technicians to treat cancer patients. Thus,the government will shortly establish 7 to 9 centres of excellence which would provide training to technicians and lab assistants, he added.

Cancer Programme

Azad said that the National Cancer Control Programme will be revised during the 11th five year plan to focus on community-based approach to create awareness and strengthen cancer care at district and tertiary-level hospitals

He said that the government is also in the process of establishing OncoNET India Project, where a network will be formed connecting 27 regional cancer centres and 100 peripheral centres to facilitate telemedicine services and continued medical education.  These peripheral centres linked to regional cancer care will be located at the district-level hospitals.

The minister said that a corpus fund of Rs 100 crore will be initiated by 'Health Ministers Cancer Patient Fund' to mitigate the suffering of the poor cancer patients. An amount of Rs 2,000 crore will be spent on non-communicable diseases including Rs 731 crore for Cancer Control Programme in the remaining two year of the current plan period.