Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (HBCH&RC), a unit of Tata Memorial Centre, celebrated its sixth anniversary at its hospital premises at Aganampudi on Wednesday.
Dr. D. Raghunadha Rao, former Director of HBCH&RC, recalled the contribution of the hospital towards providing better medical care to cancer patients in the last six years. The biggest initiative was cancer screening and prevention programme for mother-daughter pairs, wherein mothers were screened for cervical and breast cancer and daughters were given Human Papillomma Virus (HPV) vaccination to protect them against cervical cancer.
The cancer care services were expanded recently to include a new outpatient department (OPD) with six rooms, empanelment for YSR Aarogyasri scheme and many PSUs like Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited.
Dr. Umesh Mahanshetty, Director of HBCH&RC, said that the construction of the main hospital building was expected to be completed in the next few months, which would then help achieve the institute’s goal of providing comprehensive cancer care under one roof.
Around 15,000 cancer patients from Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Bangladesh would benefit upon the full-fledged commissioning of the hospital. The plan was to develop smaller peripheral cancer centres based on ‘hub and spoke model’ for prevention, screening and affordable high-quality cancer treatment at the community level.
Dr. Mahanshetty said that a pilot ECHO project was launched for providing online training to nurses in cancer screening and prevention, in collaboration with ICMR – NICPR, New Delhi. This is aimed at training different level of health workers especially at the peripheral health care units for early detection of cancer.
