THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:  Health Minister K K Shailaja said the medical colleges will gradually be converted to mini-cancer centres. “The government is committed to fighting cancer and as part of this commitment it was decided to strengthen the oncology department of medical colleges,” she said at the inauguration of the new facilities at the Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College Hospital on Wednesday. 

“The government is also focusing on developing the infrastructure facilities of the primary and the secondary health care centres to help reduce the rush at the medical colleges,” she said. According to her, both the primary health care centres and the taluk hospitals were being upgraded as centres of excellence. 
Earlier, the minister inaugurated facilities including the construction of linear accelerator (LINAC) block, neurosurgical microscope, ultra-model 3D colour Doppler echo machine and others at the medical college. It is learnt that the new facilities had come in the backdrop of the plan to convert the GMC into a centre of excellence.

Also the LINAC Block at the GMC, which will house a linear accelerator, computerized tomography simulator, brachytherapy (the treatment of cancer, especially prostate cancer, by the insertion of radioactive implants directly into the tissue) and others for the treatment of cancer, is coming at a time when there is a plan to convert the Radiotherapy Department into a comprehensive centre for cancer care. 
The other major initiative that gets started on Wednesday was the preparation of a population-based cancer registry after the Indian Council of Medical Research gave its nod to prepare a hospital-based cancer registry with the help of the National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research.