11 yrs on, cancer hospital yet to see light of day

The construction of the Tertiary Care Cancer Centre (TCCC) at Hoshiarpur seems to be deep frozen as its construction has not begun even 11 years after its foundation stone was laid by former Member of Parliament and the then Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Santosh Chaudhary in 2014 just before the Lok Sabha elections.

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At the time of the foundation stone-laying ceremony on February 28, 2014, it was announced that the hospital would be named after late Rai Bahadur Jodha Mal, a philanthropist of Hoshiarpur. The TCCC had to come up here, as Hoshiarpur was identified for strengthening the TCCC under the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS). Although the foundation stone was laid by Union MoS Chaudhary at the Fatehgarh locality in Hoshiarpur and it was to be raised in place of the old TB hospital, but later it was decided that the TCCC would be established on the premises of the Civil Hospital, Hoshiarpur.

The hospital was to be built at a cost of Rs 45 crore. Ninety per cent of the cost was to be borne by the Union Government, while the state government had give the remaining 10 per cent. It was proposed that the TCCC would have a three-storeyed building equipped with ultra-modern facilities, including radio therapy unit, X-ray, mammography and CT scan machines on the ground floor.The unit would have seven OPDs so that patients do not face any kind of discomfort. Later, the then local MLA-cum-Cabinet Minister Sunder Sham Arora had claimed that all paperwork and related process was complete and the approval for setting up of the radio therapy unit from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai, for the cancer hospital was received and soon the work will start.

In March 2019, the then Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh again laid the foundation stone of the TCCC and it was claimed that it would be complete in a year’s time. After that, it was being expected that the work for the cancer hospital at Hoshiarpur, which was lingering for more than five years, would see the light of the day, but these expectations never fulfilled.

Civil Surgeon Hoshiarpur Dr Pawan Kumar said the TCCC was to be built in Hoshiarpur, but later a medical college was announced in Hoshiarpur and the work on the college had started and the TCCC’s project did not continue.

Now noted philanthropist and coordinator of NGO Savera, retired Civil Surgeon Dr Ajay Bagga has demanded that since the TCCC does not seem to come up, a cancer day care centre should be opened at Hoshiarpur under the Centre Government’s proposed plan of opening 200 such centres across the country. He also wrote to the sitting and former MPs and MLAs to press the government for it. Former Union Minister of State Vijay Sampla and former Punjab minister Tikshan Sood have written letters to Union Minister JP Nadda to start the cancer day care centre in Hoshiarpur.