Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Dec 14: The health department plans to start a special cancer wing at Capital Hospital that is to be functional by January.
The wing will have only outdoor facilities where the patients can come for early detection of the deadly disease, health department sources told Orissa Post. Patients who are diagnosed with having cancer will be referred to other health institutions in the state for treatment.
“The proposed wing will have facilities to detect mouth, breast and geriatric cancers that are more prevalent in the state. These three types of cancer account for up to 71 per cent off the total cancer patients in the state,” said PKB Pattnaik, joint director non-communicable diseases (NCD) cell. The decision to start the cancer wing in the first phase was taken at a recently held meeting between the health department and Capital Hospital officials. It was also decided that in the second phase the hospital will have a six-bed day-care centre that will have facilities to provide chemo therapy. The proposed specialised cancer wing will come up near the existing pediatric ward of the hospital, according to hospital sources. The radio therapist of the hospital will be in charge of the wing with additional manpower being provided by the government, sources said.
The health department’s statistics revealed that there are about 4.8 lakh persons in the state suffering from various types of cancers with about 30,000 persons dying of the disease every year. In the last five years, cancer cases have increased 10-fold in the state.