Basavatarakam Indo-American Cancer Hospital and Research Institute will be a model institute not just in the country, but in the entire world, according to Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. He was speaking after laying the foundation stone for the cancer hospital at Thulluru in the capital area here on Thursday.
He said The Tata Memorial Trust, the NTR Trust and the Andhra Pradesh government were spending ₹600 crore on the establishment of cancer hospitals in the State. While cancer hospitals were being set up in Kurnool and Tirupati, hospitals were being planned in the other districts also.
Mr. Naidu said that there was no proper treatment for cancer in Andhra Pradesh when his mother-in-law Basavatarakam got the disease. She underwent treatment in Chennai, Mumbai and the United States.
It was difficult to win the war against cancer without increasing awareness about the disease among the public. People should exercise every day and shift to a fat-free diet, he said.
“The government is always thinking of making Amaravati, a really happy place. The second Happy City Summit is being conducted for the same reason,” Mr. Naidu said.
Along with the best treatment for cancer, there should be research on better treatment options for the disease at the institute. “Ensuring that not even one life is lost to cancer will be a true tribute to NTR,” he said.
Pats wife
Lauding the work of his wife Bhuvaneswari, the Chief Minister said that through the NTR Trust she was doing a lot of service to the public.
Earlier, institute chairman and Hindupur MLA Nandamuri Balakrishna and his wife Vasundhara Devi performed the ‘bhoomipuja’.
Mr. Balakrishna said that Basavatarakam Cancer Hospital in Hyderabad was in the seventh place in the country. A thousand-bed hospital would be established in Amaravati in three phases, he said. In the first phase, a 300-bed hospital would be developed at an estimated cost of ₹300 crore, he said.
Latest therapies
Cancer specialist Nori Dattatreyudu said that the latest therapies for cancer would be available to the public at the Amaravati hospital. Basavataram Cancer Hospital in Hyderabad was known for providing the best treatment. The government was working with a goal of reducing the percentage of cancer patients to 19 by 2025, he said.
Speaker Kodela Siva Prasada Rao, Minsiters N.Md Farooq, Prathipati Pulla Rao, N. Lokesh, Nakka Ananda Babu, MP Konakalla Narayana, MLC A.S. Ramakrishna, and MLA T. Sravan Kumar, Guntur ZP chairman Shaik Jani attended the programme.