Cancer institute hopes for Rs55cr Central grant

The state government is expecting a Rs 55 crore grant from the Union health ministry for the regional cancer institute at Rajarhat over spread over10 acres.

Speaking at the ILS Breast Cancer Awareness Conference, state health minister Suryakanta Mishra said that the state government had already allotted 10 acres at Rajarhat for the project and the Centre was likely to sanction Rs55 crore under the Eleventh Plan for the same.

The Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI) could be shifted to this new facility. While the plans were drawn up by the union health ministry around four years back, not much had moved from there. Meanwhile, oncologists here warned that the number of breast cancer patients in urban India could double to 60 cases per lakh from 30 per lakh now if necessary preventive measures were not taken.

"It was predicted in 1990 that there could be a 200 per cent increase in the number of breast cancer patients in urban India, and recent data collected in Mumbai already showed that the numbers had doubled from 15 cases in a lakh to the current figures.", said Rajendra A Badwe, professor and chief of surgical oncology, Tata Memorial Hospital.