Pondicherry, Feb. 12: A Rs 117-crore modernisation programme has been unveiled for the Jawaharlal Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research (Jipmer) to raise it to the level of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss today laid the foundation stone for four major projects on the Jipmer campus ? a super speciality block, a trauma care centre, a regional cancer centre and a national-level nursing college.

The minister said that despite the institute being envisaged as a national centre of excellence in medicine, it had been ignored in the past. But with the Manmohan Singh government having launched the National Rural Health Mission across the country, institutions like Jipmer would now play a critical role in taking healthcare to villages, he added.

While the AIIMS budget was Rs 420 crore and the Chandigarh-based Post-Graduate Institute in Medicine got Rs 280 crore, Jipmer was allocated only Rs 58 crore a year, Ramadoss pointed out.

The health ministry is keen to make the “historic” Jipmer, which has its origins in a medical school set up in 1823, one of the best healthcare institutions in the country, he said.

Ramadoss, who was born at the Pondicherry government hospital, said as the “son of the soil”, he wanted to contribute to pulling the institute out of “stagnation”.

The super speciality block would come up on an area of 24,000 square metres at a cost of Rs 90.61 crore. It will house wards for cardiology, cardio-thoracic and vascular surgery, neurology, neuro-surgery, nephrology, urology, nuclear medicine, plastic surgery and critical care, Ramadoss said.

Equipped with state-of-the- art facilities and with a bed strength of 360, the unit is expected to generate an additional demand for 300 doctors, he added.

India has to take substantial preventive measures to fight diseases like cancer and AIDS, Ramadoss said, and Jipmer will pitch in once the programme kickstarts.

The regional cancer centre will set up camps in villages in the region, he said. With Pondicherry being categorised as a “medium prevalence state” for HIV, along with Goa and Gujarat, it requires a concerted effort in preventing the disease from spreading any further, the minister added.