With slated completion of the ongoing works on the six AIIMS Like Institutions (ALIs) under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) and four more ALIs in the pipeline, the North Indian medical education sector is all set to get a much-desired booster shot.
Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the PMSSY scheme in March 2006 for Rs.332 crore per institution. The cost, however, escalated to Rs.820 crore per institution in March 2010. Works are in progress for these new six ALIs at Patna (Bihar), Raipur (Chattisgarh), Bhopal (MP), Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Bhubaneswar (Orissa) and Rishikesh (Uttrakhand).
Giving a further fillip to the medical education, the health ministry is also reportedly planning four more such institutions during the next five year plan. Ministry is also considering creation of an apex team to monitor the progress of the works and establishment of new institutions during the next five year plan period, it is understood. The proposed apex team will facilitate new projects under PMSSY. The team would develop sound governance and management system in view of the time over-runs and cost over-runs in the implementation of PMSSY.
The regions for the new ALIs will be decided based on geographic location, physical infrastructure, connectivity as well as the health indicators and local disease burden.
These states have been identified on the basis of various socio-economic indicators like human development index, literacy rate, population below poverty line and per capital income and health indicators like population to bed ratio, prevalence rate of serious communicable diseases, infant mortality rate etc.
Each institution will have a 960 bedded hospital (500 beds for the medial college hospital; 300 beds for speciality/super speciality; 100 beds for ICU/Accident trauma; 30 beds for physical medicine & rehabilitation and 30 beds for Ayush ) intended to provide healthcare facilities in 42 speciality/super-speciality disciplines. These medical colleges will have 100 UG intake besides facilities for imparting PG/doctoral courses in various disciplines, largely based on Medical Council of India (MCI) norms and also nursing college conforming to Nursing Council norms.
The construction work at these six sites commenced during 2007-2008 and work of housing complexes, at Jodhpur and Raipur has already been completed. However, the construction work of medical college and hospital complex has only been completed to the extent of 23-36 per cent and 10-21 per cent, respectively at various sites. It is expected that all civil works (housing; medical college; and hospital) will be completed by September 2012. The construction at other four sites would also be completed by May 2012.