1000-bed hospital to come up

- First phase to be completed by next year

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Siliguri, Feb. 15: The foundation stone of a 1,000-bed super speciality

hospital was laid at Himanchal Bihar in Matigara, near here, yesterday.

The facility which will focus on sophisticated cardiac treatment will be

run by the Narayana Hrudayalaya group of Bangalore with cardiologist
Devi Shetty as the chairman.

The group has acquired five acres from the Siliguri Jalpaiguri
Shetty (left) surrounded by people Development Authority and will start construction within next two-three
after the foundation stone of the months.
hospital was laid at Matigara on
Saturday. A Telegraph picture
“It is important to uplift the tertiary healthcare facilities, particularly in
the field of cardiac diseases, as around 25 lakh people in India need heart operations in a year while
only 80,000 get operated,” Shetty said. “Our group, running a number of hospitals in the country, plans
to increase the total number of beds to 30,000 in all the health facilities in the next two-three years.”

The first phase of the Siliguri hospital — with 500 beds, 10 operation theatres and two cardiac
catheterization laboratories — is expected to be completed by 2010. “Our target is to set up a host of
facilities and services, some of which are not available in the region,” Shetty said.

The list includes cardiology, interventional cardiology, cardio thoracic and vascular surgeries,
nephrology and urology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics, neurology and neurosurgery, emergency and
trauma care and psychiatry, besides a blood bank.

“In the first phase, we plan to raise two teaching institutions, a nursing college and a paramedical
college,” Shetty said. “We plan to enhance the number of beds to 1,000 and set up a cancer centre and
mother and childcare services in the second phase.”

Yesterday, Shetty assured state urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya of help to make the
cardiology indoor department of North Bengal Medical College and Hospital operational. “Currently, we
run only the outpatient department in cardiology at NBMCH,” Bhattacharya said.

The group’s project will largely help stop people from moving to Calcutta or south India for treatment
and can also cater for patients of Sikkim and other Northeastern states and Bhutan, Nepal and
Bangladesh.

Yesterday, a free health camp was organised at the site in which 250 people were examined. “We have
found six children with heart ailments and have decided to operate on them for free,” A. Raghuvanshi,
the vice-chairman of the group, said. “The project will offer employment to local people and to women in
particular, thereby contributing in the economic development.”

According to Bhattacharya, three other groups, the Calcutta-based B.M. Birla Heart Research Centre
and the Advanced Medicare and Research Institute Limited (AMRI) and the PNM Hospitals of
Thiruvananthapuram have decided to set up similar projects near Siliguri.

While the PNM and AMRI will be allotted two-acre plots at the Kawakhali township, the Birlas, who plan
to set up a heart research centre, will be asked to build it in Jalpaiguri district. “If they still insist plots in
Siliguri, we will provide them land,” he said. The SJDA will sell land at the rate of Rs 50 lakh per acre to
them.

The tentative investments by the four groups will be around Rs 500 crore and around 3,000 people are
expected to get jobs once all these hospitals come up, Bhattacharya said.
WITH an eye on medical-tourism, a 1,000-bed hospital is slated to come up
close to Mumbai's Sahar International Airport.

The multi-speciality hospital project is a follow-through on the BMC's

(Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) unfinished cancer hospital project,
said Dr Jitendra Maganti with the Seven Hills group, entrusted with the task
of building the hospital.

The estimated Rs 430-crore project will include a hospital and a home for
senior citizens, said Dr Maganti, Chairman and Managing Director of Seven
Hills Hospitals Ltd (SHHL). Work on the project is scheduled to start next
month. The senior citizens' home is an estimated Rs 70 crore project.

A formal lease agreement on the project is to be signed between BMC and the
Seven Hills group by month-end. The BMC's unfinished cancer hospital had to
be discontinued due to financial constraints, he said and added that the
structure was being brought down and reconstructed to house the multi-
speciality facility.

The hospital would focus on cancer, neurology, cardiovascular, nephrology,

cosmetic-surgery and orthopaedics. The project will be completed by October
2007, he said.

About 20 per cent of the hospital's beds would be for municipality patients
and facilities to these patients would be at municipal hospital rates, he added.

A new company, Seven Hills Healthcare Ltd has been floated for the project
and SHHL is the main promoter in this company.

On how the estimated Rs 430-crore SHHL would finance the project, Dr

Maganti said about Rs 270 crore would come from bank loans. He expected to
close these financial tie-ups by mid-September.

SHHL would put in about Rs 90 crore from its own pocket, he said. The
company was considering diluting its equity in favour of a foreign equity
investor interested in healthcare projects, he said.

A decision on this would be taken in two months, he added.