Government to set up first medical college in Gurgaon

GURGAON: The city’s long wait for a specialized higher education and health care facility run by the government may be over soon.

Deputy commissioner T L Satyaprakash on Wednesday announced a plan to establish a medical college in the city that will double as a charitable hospital. Satyaprakash told TOI that after paying a surprise visit to the emergency and gynaecology wards of the Civil Hospital, the only government-run healthcare facility in the city, on Monday he found the infrastructure there grossly inadequate.

“I noticed that patients i n the emergency ward were being referred to other hospitals without even consultation. Patients in the gynaecology ward were also complaining. The city’s population is growing at a rate of 75% but healthcare facilities are nowhere close to meeting the demand. The idea of the surprise visit was not to conduct an inspection, but to understand the issues patients and visitors are facing there,” said Satyaprakash.

He said that the sanctioned number of posts for doctors in the district needs to be increased to meet the requirement. “Therefore, we have envisioned creating a medical college-cum-charitable hospital in the city, and we will focus on capacity building. The institution is expected to provide scientific, technical and administrative support for implementing various schemes and policies of the healthcare department,” he said.

The budget for the project is estimated to be Rs 100 crore, of which the district administration has about Rs 40 crore. “We have been working on a comprehensive plan for funding the project, which includes finding a prospective site and faculty members. We have 40% of the funds in place. We can raise some funds through charitable organizations and the rest can be sanctioned by the government. We have a plan to present a Rs 100 crore corpus to the state government for the establishment of the institution,” Satyaprakash said.

“There is a 25-acre piece of land in a certain village that we have identified. We might utilize this land to build the institute,” he said.

The district administration is in touch with the Indian Medical Association for assistance. Besides, a delegation of CEOs of medical institutions from Kelley School for Business is expected to meet officials next month in order to discuss areas of mutual cooperation.