PGIMER Chandigarh to offer new courses, first of its kind in South East Asia

Addressing the Golden Jubilee Celebrations & Foundation Day of Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research(PGIMER), Chandigarh today Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Ghulam Nabi Azad that a National Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Architecture will be set up in the Institute which will offer Masters Programme in Health Facilities Planning and Designing and Health Care Engineering and Management. This will be the first of its kind in South East Asia. 

 

Azad said to enable the Institute to cope with the tremendous patient rush from all over the country, a 250-bedded hospital is coming up in PGI Campus which will add more private rooms and 10 Operation Theatres. It will also house the expanded Oncology, ENT and Endocrinology departments. He also added that PGIMER has been allocated Rs. 635 crores in the Union budget this year to keep up its best tradition of service, education and research.

 

Besides that, he mentioned that in-principle approval has been given to PGIMER to develop a 300-bed satellite centre at Sangrur(Punjab) which could be expanded to a 500 bed facility depending upon the case load. A 100-bed satellite centre will also be set up at Ferozepur in Punjab to provide quality tertiary care to the people living in remote areas.

 

Azad said the last 4 years have been a new era of reforms in the history of medical education of India. The availability of MBBS seats has gone up from 33,567 to 45,629 and the number of PG seats increased from 13,838 to 22,850. 72 new medical colleges including six new AIIMS at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur and Rishikesh have been established raising the number from 290 to 362. Altogether 19 Government Medical Colleges have been up-graded as super speciality hospitals.

 

To overcome the shortage of Nurses and ANMs, Government of India has sanctioned 269 nursing schools in the last two years, mostly in remote, inaccessible and under-served districts. With an estimated outlay of Rs. 2,030 crores, these institutions will give nearly 20,000 additional nurses annually. To give a boost to para-medical education and scale up the availability of para-medics, a National Institute of Paramedical Sciences (NIPS) at Delhi and 8 Regional Institutes are being established. A total of 10,760 paramedic professionals are expected to be trained annually when these institutes of excellence are fully functional.