Jorhat, Aug. 17: Assam health and family welfare minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today said the government would soon appoint 29 faculty members for the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital needed for starting eight new post-graduate courses.
Sarma, who is on a tour of Upper Assam districts since Monday, today visited the JMCH and held discussions with the authorities and senior district administration officials.
Interacting with mediapersons after the visit, Sarma said since the government has decided to introduce post-graduate courses in eight clinical subjects like surgery, anaesthesia and medicine from the next academic year of the medical college, 29 more lecturers are required to run the courses.
The minister said the college, functioning since 2010, has been running a few PG courses on pre-clinical and para-clinical subjects like anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and microbiology.
He said having more faculty members will strengthen the infrastructure and manpower, which is expected to increase the quantum of service to people.
Sarma announced that a cath lab would be set up in the cardiology department at a cost of Rs 8 crore to detect and treat various cardiac diseases.
The minister said recently, an assistant professor and a registrar were appointed in the cardiology department and one more registrar will be appointed.
Sarma said the government has sanctioned Rs 12 crore from the National Health Mission (Assam) to complete the construction of the mother and child healthcare building in the hospital.
He said a bio-metric machine will be installed within a month or so for all employees to improve monitoring and improvement of service. He said the tendering process for its installation has started.
The minister said as announced in the Assembly last week, the JMCH will have one of the six Amrit (Affordable Medicines and Reliable Implants for Treatment) pharmacies to be opened across the state.
He said these round-the-clock pharmacies will provide drugs for oncology, surgical, cardiovascular diseases and implants to patients at prices lower than the market. He said people will get discounts from 14 to 90 per cent.
Sarma said any complaint of financial irregularities or anomalies in the quality of construction of the JMCH will be probed by the government and action initiated accordingly. He said a few technical defects detected in the college building have been rectified.
JMCH, the foundation of which was laid by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in August 25, 2008, has over 100 teachers and 500 students.
