Ranchi: The Roman Catholic Church’s dream project of a medical college and hospital in Ranchi is on its way to becoming a reality.
Church officials on Wednesday said work is currently on in full swing to set up a 350-bed medical college and hospital – Constant Lievens Hospital and Research Centre at Mandar, 30km from Ranchi.
The proposed medical college and hospital, is the first of its kind in the private sector that is on its way to reality in the state. The state currently has three state government medical colleges at Ranchi, Dhanbad and Jamshedpur.
General body meeting of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, the highest policy making body of the Roman Catholic Church in the country, had given the go ahead to the dream project of Cardinal Telesphore P Toppo in 2008, to create a health care hub in Ranchi for the poor people.
However, problems in getting the required lands for the medical college and hospital resulted in inordinate delays in starting the project. The Medical Council of India norms specify that a new medical college should be “housed in a unitary campus of not less than 25 acres of land”.
Chief minister Raghubar Das had inaugurated the proposed hospital college health care hub on November 7 2015with more than 20 bishops from all over the country, in attendance.
“We have completed the renovation and modernisation of the existing Holy Family Hospital at Mandar. Set up way back in 1947 with 150 beds by the Medical Mission Sisters, the hospital and the entire complex was taken over by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India on June 1, 2016, for its conversion into a state of the art health care hub,” Fr George Pekkadenkuzhy, project-cum-hospital director of Constant Lievens Hospital and Research Centre, Ranchi, told TOI. He added, “The 150-bed Holy Family Hospital and a new hospital complex that is to come up with 200 beds will together comprise the new medical college and hospital complex.”
(Times of India)