VIMSAR doctors demand AIIMS in Sundargarh, write to PM Modi

Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported that the MCH has been a long-sought dream of the state ever since NTPC announced it in October 2010. However, there has been an unexpected delay in initiating the project. The State government and NTPC signed an MoU regarding the project in December 2013. The agreement clarified that NTPC will be responsible for establishing the MCH infrastructure while it will be run by the government.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik laid the foundation in 2014, and the MCH was supposed to be operational from 2016-17 academic sessions. However, the project got delayed and after its completion in 2020, the facility was used as a COVID hospital. In November last year, the then Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy approached the Centre with a proposal of constructing the second AIIMS. He informed that the MCH will need a budget of `418 crore, and it has provisions for 500 beds and 100 MBBS seats.

After the state government had proposed to the Centre to set up an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the tribal-dominated Sundargarh district in western Odisha, last November, then chief secretary AK Tripathy had urged the Union health secretary to consider setting up the second AIIMS at Sankara where power utility NTPC has already developed infrastructure. Subsequently, a central team had also visited the site to review the infrastructure, to find out whether the second unit of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) could be established. However, the state government found it unnecessary to build a second AIIMS.