National Cancer Institute to come up at Haryana

The Centre cleared a proposal for setting up of National Cancer Institute at the Jhajjar campus of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, at a cost of Rs 2035 crore.

The cancer institute will be located in Badhsa village in Jhajjar of Haryana, near Delhi and will be completed in a period of 45 months.  Approving the Health Ministry's proposal on Thursday, the Union Cabinet cleared a long-pending demand of Haryana government.  The step is being considered as a landmark in the area of cancer research in the country and shall lessen the deficit of tertiary cancer care in the Northern region.

Cancer is emerging as a major public health concern in India, where 11 lakh new cases are diagnosed every year and the mortality rate is 5.5 lakh per year.  Cancer treatment facilities in India are lagging behind when compared to WHO standards that requires a radiotherapy machine per million population.  India at present has 0.41 machines per million populations and the setting up of this institute will herald a new chapter in the initiative against cancer.

The Institute will have 710 beds for different facilities like surgical oncology, radiation oncology, medical oncology, anaesthesia and palliative care and nuclear medicine. It will also have the first of its kind Tissue Repository in India.  HSCC (India) Ltd, a public sector enterprise under the administrative control of the Health & Family Welfare Ministry has been appointed as Project Consultant for it by AIIMS Delhi.

The National Cancer Institute will operate on the lines of NCI in USA and DKFZ in Germany as a nodal center for indigenous research, promotive, preventive and curative aspects of care and human resource development.

The institute aims to plan, conduct and coordinate research on cancers which are more specific to India; like tobacco related cancers, cancer of the uterine cervix, gall bladder cancer and liver cancers.  The Health Ministry note said the focus will be on understanding, analyzing causes and genesis of various cancers.

The Institute will further translate the knowledge gained to develop feasible strategies to improve cancer care services by improvement in detection, diagnosis, treatment and quality of life of patients.  The proposed institute will broadly have clinical division, research divisions, and disease management groups (DMGs). These DMGs will go in to the details of all issues pertaining to management of various cancers, site wise, besides other facilities.