CHANDIGARH: As approved by the governing body in a meeting held on June 26, a new department of clinical hematology and medical oncology at PGI has been created. Prof Pankaj Malhotra will be the head of the department and there will be six faculty members posted in it.
According to the order approved by the PGI director, the combined department will function for five to 10 years. Thereafter, once adequate number of faculty posts are filled, they may be separated individually as department of medical oncology and department of clinical haematology.
Faculty and residents of the new department will continue to serve the OPD and emergency of internal medicine as being done at present till adequate faculty posts and residents are recruited in internal medicine.
The governing body has also directed to start DM course in medical oncology in the new department and bed distribution has been approved. There will be 15 beds which were earlier with the department of hepatology, 10 beds which were already allotted to hematology ICU, another 10 in the bone marrow transplant ward and two beds in male medical ward under the unit of internal medicine, which were already managed by hematology.
The department of internal medicine will continue to provide resident doctors to the department of clinical hematology and medical oncology. Presently, no dedicated space has been identified yet for the department. Approval from the PGI director mentions, “keeping in view further expansion and need of the department of clinical hematology and medical oncology, further allotment of beds and other space will be considered in due course of time as per need requirement and availability of space.”
The department will have a hematologist, surgical and medical oncologist who will coordinate with radiotherapists and radiology departments for treatment and diagnostics respectively.
