800 Crore Cancer Institute in Chennai

Chennai: The Centre has proposed to set up a Rs800 crore National Cancer Institute in Chennai to focus on research, education and treatment, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said today.

About 50 acres of land would be required in or near the city for this purpose, for which a request would be put forward to the state government, he said, after laying the foundation stone for the Indian Institute of Advanced Nursing on five acres of land at the Government Hospital of Thoracic Medicine at Tambaram donated by the Tamil Nadu government. The Indian Institute of Advanced Nursing would operate on a public-private partnership model with the Indian government, the William J. Clinton Foundation and other private partners including Apollo Hospitals Group, Cognizant Foundation and MARG Group playing a role in it.

 

The institute is an initiative of the Clinton Foundation and the Government of India. Claiming that there was a delay on part of the Tamil Nadu government in allotting land to some of his ministry’s projects, he said that its demand for 25 acres of land to set up a medicinal plant farm at Padappai near Chennai had been pending for long.

Though the Centre had proposed setting up of a Rs50 crore Metro Blood Bank in Chennai, the state government has not given the land for this purpose, he alleged.

The bank, once it comes into existence, will be one of the top institutions equipped with state-of-the art technology and a world class facility to aid accident victims. Also, the IIPHs will be on the lines of the Indian Institute of Technology, he said. “The IIPH in Hyderabad is nearly complete and I will be inaugurating it soon, but there has been no progress in Tamil Nadu,” he said