Ranchi: The Jharkhand government is working on a plan to set up cancer day-care and radiation facilities in six state-run hospitals, an official statement said on Saturday.
A detailed proposal will soon be prepared to launch such facilities on a public-private partnership basis across all five medical colleges in the state and the Ranchi district headquarters hospital, it said.
Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Ajoy Kumar Singh held a high-level meeting with officials on Friday to take the plan forward.
Singh asserted that cancer patients should get better and accessible treatment at district levels so that they would not have to travel far for treatment.
The need for a modern linear accelerator (LINAC) for radiation therapy was also discussed during the meeting, the statement said.
Those present in the meeting noted that providing radiation services requires not only the machines but also trained personnel, such as radiation specialists, technicians, and medical physicists.
The shortage of medical physicists in the state was identified as a major challenge in this sector during the meeting, according to the release.
A plan to categorise medical colleges into two groups for the proposed radiation centres was discussed, it said.
The health facilities at Jamshedpur, Dhanbad and Dumka will be in one group, while Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Palamu will be in the other.
The officials explored the possibility of arranging machinery and technical manpower for these centres through the PPP mode.
A control and command centre will be set up at Ranchi's Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) for the centralised monitoring of cancer day-care centres, the statement said.