Salt Lake cancer hospital to be upgraded in a year

KOLKATA: There may be a complete cancer care unit with 100 beds in the city in a year’s time.
Forty oncologists led by Jayshree Roy Chowdhury have come together to inject fresh blood into the ailing Dr Subodh Mitra Cancer Hospital & Research Centre at Salt Lake. At present, it has 19 beds with facilities for surgery and chemotherapy. Over the next year-and-ahalf, radiotherapy, bone-marrow transplant and hemato-oncology sections will be added at a cost of Rs 50 crore.
The centre has also entered into a collaboration with Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, to avail of its reputed doctors.Eminent cancer specialist S.H. Advani has consented to consult patients once a month.
The ‘cancer treatment under single roof ’ is a brainchild of Roy Chowdhury, founder of the hospital. Now, she and the team of doctors led by oncologist Ashis Mukhopadhyay are all geared up to revive the old centre and give it a professional look.
“In south India, after patients get admitted to a hospital, it is the end of their worries. The rest is taken care of. This concept is absent in Kolkata.
Hence, despite the availability of healthcare, lack of integrated approach to patient care has led to problems,� explained Mukhopadhyay.
Admitting that the lack of “work culture� was a problem in healthcare in West Bengal, transport minister Subhas Chakraborty urged the doctors to build a model facility so that other hospitals in the city could emulate.
Chakraborty’s wife Romola is the chairman of the board of trustees at the centre. In fact, so keen was Chakraborty about the project that he has lobbied successfully for Union health minister Shatrughan Sinha’s presence at the foundation stone laying ceremony for the radiotherapy unit on November 8.
“Patients from the east, along with their family members, spend Rs 200 crore in transport and lodging for treatment in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Vellore. We have to tap these patients and offer them facilities here. Not only would this reduce their cost of treatment, but it will be good for the state, too,� added Chakraborty.
A study by the Tata Memorial Centre sho-wed that India has nearly 900,000 new cancer patients every year. Of these, nearly 60,000 are from West Bengal and 60 per cent from eastern India,� informed Mukherjee.