Bengal cancer hub starts OPD, surgeries ahead of schedule

KOLKATA: The Cancer Care Hub (CCH), a collaborative project by the Bengal government and the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) Mumbai, has opened its doors at the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (IPGMER) within seven months after the project was announced by chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The hub opened the outpatient department (OPD) for onco-surgery last Tuesday from its temporary location at the IPGMER.Two surgeries on cancer patients have already been conducted. The services will be expanded by next week when honorary consultants in different cancer disciplines start joining the hospital.
The project has taken off even before the construction of the building for the facility is yet to start. In June last year, the CM had announced this joint venture with TMC for two such hubs — one at IPGMER and another at the North Bengal Medical College in Siliguri. For the Kolkata project, the land at 1, Harish Mukherjee Road opposite the SSKM Hospital campus was identified.
“Construction the new G + 10 building will take at least two years. Therefore, the high power committee for the CCH felt that instead of waiting for the building to be ready, we should start the project from the existing hospital facility,” said Manimoy Banerjee director IPGMER.
The onco-surgery OPD services took off last Tuesday from a designated space on the ground floor of SSKM’s new OPD building. Two young women, including the one, who had undergone treatment for ovarian cancer at two different hospitals, were operated upon. Both are recuperating well after the surgery.
“Along with the OPD space, we have also started six beds for indoor admission in the chest and cancer blocks. The beds will be ramped up and services will be scaled up further,” said professor Jayesh Kumar Jha, surgical oncology head at IPGMER. Jha was roped in recently from another government hospital for the CCH.
The committee decided to launch the services on a small scale at a meeting held in December . Currently, the OPD services are available twice a week.
“We will slowly expand the services. From February 1, we are expecting a team of honorary consultants from different disciplines to come in. We are also aiming to start a leukaemia treatment facility from February 4,” said radiation oncology head Aloke Ghosh Dastidar, chairman of the committee.
The honorary consultant panel will have on its board the alumni of Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) who are now based in Kolkata, including Sourav Datta, Abhay Kumar, Kaushik Nandy, Sudip Das and Arindam Mondal. These doctors are specialist in oncology for head and neck, urology, orthopaedic, medical and haematology, gastro-intestinal and thoracic. Doctors from TMH will work in close coordination with the IPGMER team on new techniques and exchange knowledge through various modules of training.
The construction work on the CCH will begin soon while the bhumi puja was conducted on Friday.