Tata Trusts abandons Odisha cancer project

BHUBANESWAR: Is Tata Trusts abandoning Odisha government’s most ambitious cancer care programme? 

With the State government deciding to go ahead with its own funds and talks about a former founder of an IT giant being roped in for a world-class cancer hospital gaining momentum, it appears that the oldest charity of the country is not keen on the project for which it had inked a pact three years ago.

On May 6, 2018, managing trustee of Tata Trusts R Venkataramanan had signed the MoU with the then Secretary of Health and Family Welfare department in the presence of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and chairman of Tata Trusts Ratan Tata to create a comprehensive cancer care network in the State.

As part of the agreement, a three-tier cancer care network with a state-of-the-art Cancer Hospital and Research Centre near Baranga on the model of Mumbai-based Tata Memorial and Acharya Harihar Post Graduate Institute of Cancer (AHPGIC), Cuttack as an apex centre, were to be developed. Diagnostics facilities along with radiotherapy units were to be developed at 15 locations in the State. The Tata Trusts had committed Rs 300 crore for the Rs 800 crore programme to be implemented over a period of five years.

Though the Chief Minister had laid the foundation stone of the project on February 17, 2019, there is no tangible progress on the project in the last two years.

Sources said months after the agreement, the Trust came up with a proposal only to bear the cost of high-end equipment to be installed at the radiotherapy units and sought the government’s intervention for a well-developed approach road for the Rs 150 crore cancer hospital project. “The government had agreed to the proposal and approved a four-lane road to be developed at a cost of Rs 57 crore. But there was no commitment from the Trust for the hospital,” sources said.

Tata Trusts seems to be in double minds over the project after an external evaluation made early last year indicated that the hospital may not be viable as a standalone unit with limited flow of patients unless it is made an integrated one with cardiology and renal facilities. While the Trust authorities could not be contacted, a senior health official said the government will take up the cancer care programme along with radiotherapy units with its own fund for which a five-year plan has been made.

11 radiotherapy units to come up in state 

As part of distributed cancer care plan, 11 linac radiotherapy units will be set up along with 50-bed cancer hospital at each location in three phases and the AHPGIC will be developed into an apex centre. “In the first phase, the radiotherapy units will be set up at the medical colleges at Burla, Berhampur, Koraput and Keonjhar besides the Capital Hospital and Bargarh district headquarters hospital at a cost of Rs 363 crore for which provisioning is being made in the 2021-22 budget,” said the official. The units and cancer hospitals will come up at Balasore and Balangir in the second phase and at Baripada, Angul and Bhawanipatna in the third phase.