Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital (KDAH) has started two daycare centres in Gondia and Akola to offer chemotherapy and radiotherapy. While a third centre will come up in Solapur in March, the hospital will open 15 more centres across the State by 2022.
“We opened the Akola centre on December 3 and the one in Gondia was inaugurated on December 23. We have already carried out 150 radiotherapy and nearly 20 chemotherapy sessions,” Dr. Ram Narain, executive director of KDAH, said. The hospital celebrated its 10th anniversary on Friday.
Health services in rural Maharashtra suffer due to a shortage of doctors. The KDAH, however, has managed to get full-time radiation oncologists at both the centres.
The doctor posted in Gondia, who was working in Mumbai, was happy to go back to his home town with attractive remuneration. The doctor posted in Akola has come down from Kolkata.
The daycare centres have been named Reliance Hospital Cancer Care. They have 10 beds for chemotherapy patients, a state-of-the-art linear accelerator device for radiation, and a staff of nearly 12 people, including a full-time doctor, trained nurses, and technicians.
While the KDAH has never been part of the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana (MJPJAY), the State’s insurance scheme for the poor, the cancer centres will be empanelled on the scheme. “We have consciously gone to rural areas where we can cater to a whole different segment of society,” Dr. Narain said.
He also said, “In all the areas, we have acquired enough land to build 100-bed hospitals in the future.” The cost of chemotherapy and radiotherapy will be subsidised for the paying patients. For those under the MJPJAY, the costs will be as per the fixed package rates.
