Cancer centre at Ambala Cantt to get PET-CT scanning facility

Nitish Sharma

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Tribune News Service

Ambala, December 1

The tertiary care cancer centre (TCCC), established on the premises of Civil Hospital, Ambala Cantonment, will have the facility of PET-CT (positron emission tomography and computed tomography) scanning. The Health Department has planned to get a four-storey separate building for the project.

After getting approval from the state government for the project, a request for the construction of a new building has been moved by the health authorities in Ambala to the headquarters. Health officials here have planned to get a four-storey building for the PET-CT scanning facility and nuclear medicine department.

Dr Vinay Goel, Deputy Medical Officer-cum-Nodal Officer for the construction of the TCCC, said, “PET-CT scanning plays an important role in the diagnosis and assessment of cancer. It is used to detect cancer, shows how advanced a cancer is and also whether it has spread to other parts of the body. We can detect cancer at the initial stage with the help of this machine.”

“The nuclear medicine department was the part of phase-II of the Tertiary Care Cancer Centre. It will be a multi-crore project. A four-storey building will be constructed for the project for which a request has already been moved to the higher authorities. As per the information, so far, the PET-CT scan machine will be run by the Health Department”, he added.

The official informed that the operational licence of the CT simulator, installed at the TCCC, was received from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board on Tuesday, while the brachytherapy machine, a machine used for cancer treatment, got custom’s clearance on Tuesday. The machine is likely to reach Ambala by the end of this week. The machine is cost s Rs 4 crore.

The commissioning process of the linear accelerator machine, which will be used to treat cancer patients, is also on. The machine was imported at a cost of over Rs 18 crore. The hospital is expected to start operations from January next year. The facility (TCCC) is coming at a cost of Rs 72 crore.

Meanwhile, Haryana Home and Health Minister Anil Vij said, “The cancer centre in Ambala will bring a huge relief to not only patients of Haryana but also the patients of neighbouring states. A PET scan machine will also be installed here soon.”