Jamshedpur: The Meherbai Tata Memorial Hospital (MTMH), a 72-bed trust-managed cancer hospital located here, is set to become the first comprehensive cancer-care centre of the state with Tata Trusts deciding to support the hospital in a massive round of upgradation, which was inaugurated on Saturday by Tata Trusts chairman Ratan Tata.

As part of the upgradation the hospital will be expanded to a 130-bed facility, a new out patient department will replace the existing one while a range of advanced cancer detection and treatment equipments will also be installed. The hospital will also work closely with neighbour Tata Main hospital to provide cutting edge cancer care.

Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrashekaran and global CEO and managing director T.V. Narendran were also present at the inauguration.

In July the hospital will install the state's first Positron Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography (PET-CT) . "A PET-CT machine is an advanced scanning machine that can detect changes before a normal MRI or CT scan and can also show whether a specific treatment is working for a patient,"MTMH director Sujata Mitra explained,

The hospital will also procure a linear accelerator, a device for external beam radiation treatment for cancer patients and also introduce brachy therapy, a kind of treatment of cancer, especially of the prostate, by the insertion of radioactive implants directly into the tissue.

A palliative care unit, surgical and medical oncology departments are also on the cards. Tata Trusts will also help MTMH impart domain-specific training to doctors and nurses. The whole project is expected to complete in 10 months.

According to available data, on an average, 34000 cancer cases are reported from Jharkhand annually with a growth rate of 13 per cent every year. As most patients prefer to travel to other cities expecting better medical facilities, the average waiting time for a surgery is between three and six months.

"We hope patients will not have to travel beyond three hours for cancer treatment," said Mitra.

Tata Trusts and Tata Consultancy Services also plan to setup a digital nerve centre in Ranchi. "This centre will connect patients to an expert team virtually. Patients will submit their past reports and the system shall get back to them within 24 hours," said TCS strategy and operations consultant Shruti Malhotra.

Other hospitals that are part of the of the digital nerve centre are Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, Tata Medical Centre, Kolkata and Adyar Cancer Institute, Chennai.