AGARTALA, August 2 (TIWN): The state government urged upon Union Health and Family Welfare minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan to start an All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) campus in close vicinity to the Agartala city during a visit of state Health Minister Badal Choudhury to the union health minister on July 31. Speaking to reporters at the civil secretariat here this evening, Health Minister Choudhury said that a memorandum was submitted to union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan where the former sought the Government of India to consider establishing an AIIMS in Tripura at the earliest.

The state government also sought to upgrade technical knowhow of super-specialty doctors of the state in a collaborative effort with AIIMS, Delhi. A delegation of the AIIMS is expected to visit the state to oversee the process of technical upgradation of the state’s own specialists somewhere in mid September this year, Health Minister Choudhury said.

He added that training and skill upgration is a serious necessity since training of doctors, nurses and paramedical staff couldn’t be made available in either of the two medical colleges of the state due to lack of super-specialty hospital in the state. Speaking about the centre’s reaction to the demand of starting an AIIMS in Tripura, Choudhury said that they asked the state government to provide at least 200 acres of land for the project.

“It is crucial to locate the AIIMS complex in close vicinity to the Agartala city to make sure everybody from across the state got equal benefit of the facility. We haven’t still decided any plot of such large proportion near the city area”, the minister said. Asked about the state government’s take on the Tripura High Court’s recent verdict on the TBJEE counseling and admission into MBBS course at the Agartala Government Medical College (AGMC), the health minister said that it would be critical to see off students admitted in the MBBS degree following counseling and denying the High Court is most unimaginable.

“Under the circumstances, we have requested the central government to consider allocating us at least 14-15 extra MBBS seats from the central pool to bridge the situation”, he said. The minister added that he expected the Health Ministry to consider the issue with sympathy. The state is currently having around 180 MBBS seats for Tripura domicile students every year including the AGMC, Tripura Medical College and the RIMS, Imphal.

“The figures are very less compared to the number of eligible aspiring candidates”, Health Minister Choudhury noted. He further said that the state government had proposed for construction of 15 Primary Health Centres (PHC) in tribal dominated areas of the state. “Our rural healthcare infrastructure has to increase. We understand that there is a gap existing between the existing and required capacity”, said the minister.