The Centre is committed to improving the health infrastructure in the northeast and providing quality healthcare services to the people of the region, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said today.
Mandaviya was here to inaugurate new health infrastructures at the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS). He also laid the foundation stone for a 150-bed critical care block at the institute.
Speaking at the inaugural function, the health minister said the new facilities at the NEIGRIHMS will help attract and retain medical professionals in the northeast.
Appreciating the work culture and cleanliness in the NEIGRIHMS, he said the government is committed to further developing the infrastructure at the institute, so that it continues to remain a hub for medical treatment, research and training of healthcare and allied healthcare professionals for the northeast.
To ensure quality health, the government aims to develop a health institute of national importance in every state, similar to AIIMS. “It is our plan to develop NEIGRIHMS as an institute of national importance,” Mandaviya said.
Mandaviya said the Centre has adopted a holistic approach towards the health sector.
“We are not only creating new and advanced medical infrastructure, we are also increasing the number of doctors and nursing stuff. In the last nine years, the number of medical colleges has doubled in the country,” he said, adding that 1.7 lakh health and wellness centres have also come up in India.
“We are also building one critical care unit in every district in the country,” the health minister said.
The health infrastructures inaugurated at NEIGRIHMS included the new 252-bedded regional cancer centre, and under-graduate medical college equipped with the state-of-the-art technologies to a batch of 100 MBBS students per year, a new building for the nursing college, hostel, modular operation theatre for complex surgeries and a guesthouse.
A key highlight of the new facilities is the virtual autopsy facility, which is one of the most advanced and sophisticated facility, available only at few centres in the country. Virtual autopsy is a non-invasive post-mortem examination that uses medical imaging technology to create a 3D model of the body, which can then be examined by forensic pathologists and other medical professionals.
NEIGRIHMS Director, Prof Nalin Mehta said that the new facilities will vastly improve healthcare facilities in NEIGRIHMS and will lead to increase in seats for MBBS and B.Sc. Nursing courses in Meghalaya. He further said that with the improvement of medical facilities in the Northeast region, people will not have to go far to other regions of the country for medical treatment.
