Budget focuses on boosting state’s health infrastructure

Patna: The state budget has put strong emphasis on strengthening the existing health infrastructure, stating that specialists such as orthopaedics, ophthalmologists and ENT doctors would be made available at community health centres being upgraded into speciality hospitals.

The budget also stated that work to upgrade district hospitals into superspecialty hospitals was under way.




Patna Medical College and Hospital is being developed as a world-class hospital and, in the first phase, 1,100 beds across two towers have become functional. Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital is being renovated at a cost of Rs 2,546 crore.

State medical colleges and hospitals have been constructed and dedicated to the public in five districts — Purnia, Bettiah, Samastipur, Madhepura and Saran. Construction work in 10 other districts, including Madhubani, Vaishali, Siwan, Jamui, Bhojpur, Buxar, Begusarai, Supaul, Munger and Sitamarhi, is currently under way.

Cancer-related treatment has begun at the newly constructed 100-bed hospital at Gangwara in Darbhanga, where facilities are available for the treatment of head, mouth and neck cancer. A palliative care cancer unit with 100 beds is also being constructed at Muzaffarpur to provide care for patients in advanced stages of cancer.

To promote traditional systems of medicine, more than Rs 803 crore is being spent on setting up Ayurvedic colleges in Darbhanga and Begusarai, a homeopathic college in Muzaffarpur, and on constructing a Tibbi College building in Patna.

Construction of the 400-bed Loknayak Jaiprakash Narayan Hospital, a superspecialty orthopaedic hospital, is in the final stage and is being undertaken at a cost of Rs 215 crore.