File picture of the Paradip Port Trust Hospital

Paradip, Nov. 17: Paradip Port Trust is set to propose a superspecialty hospital here in public private partnership to extend specialised health care facilities to people living in and around the port township.

The proposed state-of-the-art hospital will have 400 beds. The health unit equipped with advanced diagnostic facilities will match the services provided at medical colleges. An agency has been asked to prepare a project report on this, said chairman of the port trust Sudhansu Sekhara Mishra.

At present, the Paradip Port Trust (PPT) runs a 64-bed hospital. It mainly caters to the needs of port town residents, port users and shipping agents. Once the superspecialty hospital comes up, people living in the peripheral areas would also benefit from it.

The private partner will develop the hospital on allotted land. According to Medical Council of India (MCI) rules, the proposed hospital would come up over 10 acres, said a port official.

“We badly need a superspecialty hospital here. People are now depending on better-equipped hospitals at Cuttack and Bhubaneswar for specialised treatment. PPT should prioritise this so that it can come up within a year,” said former MP Pravat Kumar Samantaray.

The Centre has included Paradip under a mega petroleum, chemicals and petro-chemical investment region (PCPIR) and the importance of the port town has gone up manifold. Moreover, the town awaits to be an industrial hub with two major steel projects, oil refinery and scores of ancillary industrial units queuing up to set up base here. Consequently, the growth of the health care infrastructure has also become the need of the hour.

PPT officials said Paradip was maintaining its second position in terms of traffic handled amongst ports across the country. The port has initiated steps for mechanisation of EQ-1 to EQ-3 berths for giving a boost to the handling of coal export. The completion of the project will add 22 million tonnes of capacity. The present annual cargo handling capacity of the port stands at 108.50 million tonnes. PPT has drawn up a blueprint infrastructure to enhance its capacity to 270 million tonnes by 2023.