Road Map Prepared For Comprehensive Cancer Care And Treatment In AP

VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh government is preparing a comprehensive cancer care road map under which the health department will set up cancer care units in seven teaching hospitals to provide free treatment.

MT Krishna Babu, Principal Secretary, Department of  Health,Naveen Kumar, Special Secretary and J Nivas, Commissioner for Health and Family Welfare held a teleconference with State health officials on Monday at the APIIC building in Mangalagiri.

He said that it was Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s endeavour to make  advanced cancer treatment available in the state without patients having to go to other states for treatment

Procedures need to be devised to make advanced cancer treatment available in AP. Cancer treatment should be made available in 11 existing teaching hospitals. Radiotherapy, medical and surgical oncology treatment should be made available in the first 7 teaching hospitals.

Plans should be made to expand to the other four teaching hospitals, Krishna Babu said.

Appropriate training programmes for medical staff for cancer treatment should be undertaken. APMSIDC MD Muralidhar Reddy was instructed to take up the task of sending a technical team to Homi Baba Cancer Hospital in Visakhapatnam and prepare a report about the treatment there.

Comprehensive action should be taken to make cancer treatment available up to the village level. An appropriate plan should be drawn up to undertake the construction of bunkers in all the 16 newly constructed medical colleges, he said.

Krishna Babu also inquires about setting up of Linac, Cobalt, Brachytherapy, CT simulator bunker, machine for Radio Oncology. Comprehensive Cancer Care Centers should be set up at Vizag AMC, Guntur District Chinnakakani and Balaji Oncology Institutes in Tirupati.

Radiotherapy should be made available in the first phase in teaching hospitals, Krishna Babu said. The panel should set up radiotherapy, clinical and surgical oncology units at teaching hospitals in the next three years.  DME Dr. Raghavendra Rao, DH Dr. Hymavathi and Cancer care sSpecialists participated in the video conference.

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