Assam’s healthcare gets a boost with super specialty hospital 

GUWAHATI: A super specialty hospital along with an eye bank was opened at Guwahati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) here on New Year’s Day, in a major boost to Assam’s health sector.

State health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the 257-bed super specialty hospital, which was earlier serving as a COVID hospital, has state-of-the-art equipment to provide the best of healthcare in the country,” Sarma said.

Sarma said that the second wing of the super-specialty hospital is expected to be ready by February.

“We are also giving a symbolic message (by making the state-of-the-art facility functional) on New Year’s Day that we are returning to a normal life after dealing with the pandemic,” he said, addressing a programme at GMCH after inaugurating the super specialty hospital.

He further said that COVID has taught us the importance of having adequate health infrastructure to meet any eventuality.

“As it is, we have enhanced our healthcare infrastructure as an emergency response, be it setting up intensive care units across the state, laboratories in all the medical colleges, oxygen providing facilities at GMCH besides recruitment and training of adequate frontline staff in the past one year,” Sarma added.

The health minister also said that a master plan to transform GMCH into one of the biggest facilities in the country has been prepared.

“Work on a 300-bed cancer hospital is going on in the right side of GMCH. A 500-bed mother and child hospital will be ready in the next two years as well. So along with the super-specialty hospital, GMCH will soon have over 3000 beds, which make the hospital one of the biggest in the country,” he said.

Sarma said the left side of GMCH would be decongested and dedicated to medicine and general surgeries once the new facilities are ready to function.

The health minister also inaugurated an eye bank at GMCH, which he said would be a “boon not only for Assam but for Northeast as a whole.”

“The eye bank has been set up by the Assam government in collaboration with the Tata Trusts, Hans Foundation and the LV Prasad Eye Institute which is a novel step towards eye care in the region,” he said.

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