The fist academic session of the city centre of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) medical college is set to begin from August this year. The 500-bed multi-speciality hospital is expected to start functioning from December 2012.
“The session for the first batch of students for AIIMS medical college will begin from August 2012 with an intake of 50 seats. We expect the hospital to be operational from December this year. Work on the AIIMS campus is 65 per cent complete,” said P K Pradhan, Union health secretary. On the state government's demand for funds for seat hike in three government run medical colleges, Pradhan said, “The Chief Secretary has said that the state government intends to raise intake of each of three medical colleges from 150 to 250. This requires an investment of Rs 100-150 crore per college for infrastructure upgrade. We are coming up with a scheme wherein we can provide funds to the state government for upgradation of infrastructure at medical colleges.”
AIIMS is coming up on 100 acres of land at Sijua on the outskirts of the city. The state government had approved Rs 18 lakh for putting up an 11 KV line at the AIIMS project site while an additional Rs 9 lakh was been approved for beautification of the campus.
The state government had also constituted a project monitoring committee headed by the state Chief Secretary B K Patnaik to review the status of the AIIMS project every month.
The AIIMS-Bhubaneswar project consists of three components- hospital, medical college and housing and work has started on all the three areas. While the hospital is being taken up at a cost of Rs 264 crore, around Rs 100 crore was to be spent on the medical college and Rs 50 crore on housing.
It may be noted the erstwhile NDA government at the Centre had proposed to set up six branches of AIIMS at Patna, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Raipur and Rishikesh in 2003. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had given its nod to the projects in March, 2006.