New superspeciality departments will be started at Government Medical College, Manjeri, soon and 15 faculty posts have been created for the same, Health Minister Veena George said in the Kerala Assembly on January 29 (Monday).
Replying to a calling attention motion by P. Nandakumar on the need to prioritise the development and modernisation of government medical colleges, especially the one at Manjeri, Ms. George said that emergency medicine, physical medicine, cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, nephrology, urology and neurology divisions will be started at the Manjeri Medical College Hospital (MCH) soon.
She said that new postgraduate courses are also being introduced at Manjeri and Kollam MCHs. Land acquisition for improving the physical infrastructure at Manjeri MCH is being speeded up. A nursing college with 60 seats has also been started alongside the medical college.
The work on residential facilities for girl students was being completed. Administrative sanction has already been given for starting a critical care unit at ₹23 crore at Manjeri MCH and another ₹7 crore for purchasing an MRI scan machine. Proposals for a ₹50-crore OP block and a ₹26 crore radiology and diagnostic complex are also before the government.
Ms. George said that the MCH has 57 staff members under the Health Service and another 122 under the Medical Education Service. It also has 46 senior residents, 62 junior residents and 100 house surgeons.
She said that phenomenal changes have taken place in the medical education sector in the last two years and that two new MCHs, at Idukki and Konni respectively, have been started in a single year. The government has added 1,400 seats in the nursing sector. In the public sector, the nursing seats have gone up from 400 to 612.
In the medical education sector, Kozhikode and Alappuzha MCHs are getting new superspeciality blocks. The government has also created 270 new faculty posts in the sector, she said.
