Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Saturday inaugurated teaching hospitals at five government medical colleges and laid the foundation stones for the upgradation of four others.
Patnaik inaugurated teaching hospitals in newly opened government medical colleges.
They were Bhima Bhoi Medical College in Balangir, Pandit Raghunath Murmu Medical College in Baripada and Fakir Mohan Medical College in Balasore, each having 650 beds.
Sundargarh Government Hospital and Keojhar Dharani Dhar Medical College have 500 beds each.
The Medical Colleges to be upgraded with world-class facilities are Cuttack’s Acharya Harihar Post Graduate Institute of Cancer, Berhampur MKCG-MCH, Rourkela RGH and Burla VIMSAR.
“Providing the best of medical assistance to people is the goal of the government. Today’s launches are a major step in ensuring that people of the state have access to the best of health services,” Patnaik said, adding that a healthy state is a happy state.
“Nearly 3,000-bed teaching hospitals worth over Rs 2,000 crore were launched in a single day. This will benefit people across all socio-economic backgrounds in the districts concerned,” Patnaik said.
There was a time when Odisha had three medical colleges, Patnaik said, adding that eight new medical colleges have come up in the state in the last six years.
This apart, two postgraduate institutes have been established during the time, an official said.
Meanwhile, the official said three more medical colleges are all set to come up in the next three years.
Though Odisha earlier produced only 321 MBBS doctors and 254 specialists annually, the number has so far increased to 2,525 MBBS and 972 specialist doctors annually.
PTI