Kanpur: Six medical college hospitals in Uttar Pradesh will be modernized and converted into super-specialty facility on the lines of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said in Kanpur.
He said high disease burden of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of the country, has influenced the decision to add two more colleges to the already cleared list of medical colleges that will be upgraded under Phase 3 of Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY).
"I attach high priority to UP and have been to this place twice already in my three month-long tenure. As I had been a medical student in Kanpur, I happen to know that the need of the hour is to expand infrastructure at an unprecedented rate because we have to make up for many years of neglect," he said.
Kanpur's Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Memorial (GSVM) Medical College is the Health Minister's alma mater. He was an MBBS and MS student here between 1974 and 1983.
This medical college's upgrade is to be put on fast-track as it is catering to a huge population with no comparable facility anywhere in and around Kanpur, Vardhan said.
Apart from this one, the Sarojini Naidu Medical College, Agra also joins the PMSSY list. The four already under the third phase of the programme are the ones at Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Meerut and Jhansi.
Earlier, the Institute of Medical Sciences at Varanasi, the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute at Lucknow and the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College at Aligarh have been upgraded under PMSSY.
Under PMSSY-3, the central and state governments contribute on an 80:20 basis for establishing tertiary health care facilities by upgrading the existing ones.
The Health Minister also held a meeting in Kanpur circuit house with Uttar Pradesh government's Principal Secretary (Medical Education) BS Bhullar, Special Secretary (Medical Education) Dr Arindam Bhattacharya, and Director-General (Medical Education) KK Gupta.
Sundeep Nayak, Joint Secretary of the Union Health Ministry, was also present.
