3pvt medical colleges to come up in Bengal

Subhendu Maiti, HT, 4 Dec 2016, Kolkata: The medical education sector in the state is going to receive a much-needed boost with the establishment of eight medical college hospitals. Of these, three new private medical colleges and hospitals are set to come up in Budge Budge, Salt Lake and Durgapur by 2017. These projects will together cost around Rs 500 crore, that is, more than Rs 150 crore each. Hardly a couple of months ago, the state government had announced that it will set up five medical college hospitals, one each in Cooch Behar, Raigunj, Rampurhat, Purulia and Diamond Harbour.

With the establishment of these eight proposed medical colleges, the number of teaching hospitals will shoot up to 26, having around 3,600 MBBS seats. There are around 2,550 undergraduate medical seats in the existing 18 government and private medical colleges across the state. Sources in the health department said the two private medical colleges at Budge Budge and Durgapur might get the approval of the Medical Council of India (MCI) by 2017.

“MCI is expected to inspect our college, Jagannath Gupta Institute for Medical Science, for the first time soon to verify whether it has the necessary infrastructure required for the first-year MBBS course. The cost of the project is around Rs 150 crore. Our buildings for academics, administration, hostels, laboratories for anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and so on are ready. We have also hired adequate number of faculty members, doctors, nurses and group D men as per the requirements of the council,” said a senior official of the institute.

The owner of this institute also runs an engineering college and a school in Budge Budge, South 24-Parganas. The proposed medical college in Durgapur is also in the process of installing the necessary infrastructure. A former director of SSKM Hospital has already joined the college as principal.

Considering the requirement of medical teachers for its five proposed teaching hospitals, the state government also plans to extend the retirement age of the faculty members (in its existing medical colleges) to 70 from the existing 65. The estimated cost for setting up these colleges will be around Rs 1,000 crore.

The health department has decided to write to the Union health ministry for relaxing faculty and infrastructure norms for setting up these new medical colleges. When asked about the deadline by which these new medical colleges would come up, the health department officials said generally it takes five years for a new medical college to be commissioned.

However, officials fear that it will be extremely difficult to get the adequate human resources, mainly teaching doctors, nurses and technicians, to run these new institutes. Considering the crisis, private teaching hospitals are hiring the retired medical teachers of government medical colleges by offering them a hefty salary.