CM grants Assam Med College 300cr for docs’ quarters, students’ hostel

Dibrugarh: CM Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday announced a grant of Rs 300 crore for the construction of doctors’ quarters and a students’ hostel of the Assam Medical College during its platinum jubilee celebrations.
Established on November 3, 1947, the Assam Medical College is the first medical institution in the northeast.
To mark 75 years of the Assam Medical College, the CM released a commemorative postal stamp and unveiled a souvenir in the presence of hundreds of present and past alumni of the medical college. He also flagged off nine advanced life support ambulances donated by ONGC as part of its CSR initiative at a cost of Rs 4.38 crore. The CM also paid tributes to Sir John Berry White whose efforts led to the birth of the Assam Medical College. He spoke about how the college owes its birth to White, the great visionary of modern medical education.
Way back in 1858, twenty-four-year-old British surgeon Dr John Berry White arrived in Assam to work under the East India Company. The young surgeon served in upper Assam for 24 years and rose to the position of civil surgeon in the then undivided Lakhimpur district. Following his retirement in 1882, he donated his entire life savings of Rs 50,000 (estimated to be worth more than Rs 10 million today) for setting up a medical school in Dibrugarh. White died on November 19, 1896 in London and four years after his death, the Berry White Medical School was set up in Dibrugarh in 1900. Later Assam’s first chief minister, Gopinath Bordoloi, decided to convert the Berry White Medical School into a full-fledged medical college and thus the Assam Medical College was set up in 1947 through a process of upgradation.