In his continuous endeavour to provide better health services, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath recently inaugurated a new Super Specialty Cancer Institute (SSCI) for the people of the state.
The super-specialty cancer institute and hospital, established in Lucknow, would be the biggest cancer centre in India once it gets fully functional. The hospital is built on the lines of a globally recognized cancer care hospital in Mumbai – Tata Memorial Center. But the institute will be double in size of that Tata Memorial Institute of Mumbai.
The Mumbai hospital has a facility of 650 beds and the National Cancer Institute of Jhajjar, Haryana has 700 beds. But this new cancer institute at CG City, Sultanpur Road will have a facility of 1,250 beds. This makes it four times of Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute in the national capital.
The Chief Minister dedicated the hospital’s main OPD block in a virtual ceremony in the presence of Union Defence Minister and Lucknow MP Rajnath Singh. With this, out-patient services like radiation oncology, daycare and surgical oncology have begun at the SSCI. The facility will start in two days with 750 beds being made functional in the first phase and the other 500 in the second phase.
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Adityanath said that the cancer institute, which has been established with the help of Tata Trust, will be a big facility to the people of the state. “The biggest lesson that COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is to have better medical facilities. The state has already got a cancer hospital in Kashi with the blessings of honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi,” he said.
He said that initiatives like Mukhyamantri Jan Arogya Yojana and Ayushman Yojana have helped in improving the health infrastructure of the state. The present capacity of the cancer hospital in Lucknow is of 54 beds and it will be soon upgraded to a capacity of 750.
According to Additional Chief Secretary, Medical Education, Dr. Rajneesh Dubey, “Besides being a benchmark in patient care by providing state-of-the-art and affordable services, SSCI will serve as the apex state cancer institute for capacity building. It will also start a population-based cancer registry for the state capital.”
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The cancer institute will follow the DMG format. Under this, specialists of all disciplines sit in a room along with the patient who sits just opposite them as is witnessed in high profile interviews. The experts will listen to the medical issues of the patient and finalise the treatment line.
The facility, which is expected to become functional at the earliest, will not only benefit people in Uttar Pradesh but also those from nearby states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. According to a data, one in every three patients that report at the Indian Council of Medical Research’s national cancer registry is from these three states.
The figures clearly indicate that Uttar Pradesh desperately needed a state-of-the-art facility with all services under one roof. According to a 2017 report on cancer, the state was among the worst-affected ones. In 2016, Uttar Pradesh saw 6.7 lakh of the 39 lakh cancer cases reported in the country.