Union Cabinet to take up AIIMS cancer centre proposal tomorrow

NEW DELHI: The long-pending proposal for the setting up of the National Cancer Institute at the second campus of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences ( AIIMS) in Haryana is likely to be taken up by the Union Cabinet at a meeting here tomorrow.

The proposal by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare entails the setting up of a 600-bed Cancer Institute on the 300-acre second campus of the premier medical institute at Badsah village in the Jhajjar area of Haryana.

Sources said that the proposed institute would be the biggest of its kind in the country and is to be equipped with facilities for treating different forms of cancer.

The Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) has already given its nod to the proposal.

The matter, which has been pending for long, has been pursued by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his MP son, Deepinder Hooda.

The institute will have 200 beds dedicated to clinical research and another 200 for palliative care of patients in advanced stages of cancer.

Once cleared, the existing cancer research facility at AIIMS, Delhi, too, will be shifted to the second campus, which will also house branches of medical, surgical and radiation oncology.

New centres of nuclear medicine, preventive oncology and psycho-oncology -- counselling for cancer patients -- will also be set up on the Jhajjar campus.

The institute will also have a 24x7 cancer emergency ward, sources said.