Artist’s impression of the multi-organ transplant hospital planned in New Town, Rajarhat

New Town, Rajarhat, is all set to have eastern India’s “first-of-its-kind” hospital providing multi-organ transplant, which promises to halt the transplant traffic out of town.

Being developed by a consortium of Global Hospitals, the brainchild of surgical gastroenterologist K. Ravindranath in Hyderabad and the city-based Sureka Group, ground-breaking for the first phase is planned after the monsoon.

“We are looking at 300 beds to start with, on the three acres allotted to us by the government following the tendering and assessment processes. However, we have asked for another two acres and the facility could be eventually ramped up to 1,000 beds,” Pradip Sureka, managing director of the Sureka Group, tells Metro.

Besides a multi-organ transplant centre, conducting liver, heart, bone marrow and kidney transplants, the New Town facility will also be a referral centre for complex surgeries/ treatment in the areas of liver/ gastroenterology, cardiac and cardio-thoracic, pancreatic, kidney and all blood disorders.

“We also have lung and islet cells (of the pancreas) transplantation on the horizon, besides setting up an advanced stem cells research unit on the campus. Our costs will also be extremely competitive — we’ll offer liver transplant for Rs 20 lakh, against the rack rate of around Rs 1 crore in Singapore or the US,” says Tamal Bhattacharyya, director, Save Health Pvt Ltd and representative of Global Hospitals in Calcutta.

While the Rajarhat hospital, to come up in Action Area III next to DPS New Town, will do both cadaver and live transplants, it “won’t carry out donor transplants other than first-degree blood-related cases”, stresses Bhattacharyya.

The city facility will have back-up technical and faculty support from Kings College, UK, and Kyoto University, Japan.

Construction time for the Rs 150-crore initial phase is estimated at 18-21 months, while the cost of the final project could touch Rs 500 crore, says Ravi Venkatesh, CEO, Sureka Group.

The hospital, which will perform simple-to-complex surgeries alongside the multi-organ transplants, will also have dedicated accommodation for patient kin with transportation facilities.

The mother model, Global Hospitals in Hyderabad, is a super-speciality corporate hospital focusing on multi-organ transplant and specialities like gastroenterology, cardiology, nephrology and urology.

The city project will follow this broad pattern, with provisions for training and research, adds Bhattacharyya.

Pledging the “finest global standards in an aseptic environment” and technology support, the consortium hopes to wean away a clutch of transplant specialists from leading hospitals abroad to “return to their roots” and work at the “landmark project” in Calcutta.