Telangana government spent Rs 6,669 crore towards healthcare in last 18 months
Undeterred by the lack of support from the Centre, the Telangana government in the last 18 months has spent a staggering Rs 6,669 crore towards development of speciality healthcare facilities in district hospitals, establishing 16 medical colleges and a superspecialty Warangal Health City.
To ensure specialty healthcare facilities are available in government district hospitals, the State government is in the process of upgrading eight major district hospitals, apart from constructing new medical colleges that will be attached to them. These eight medical colleges with 100 MBBS seats each are coming up at Vikarabad, Siricilla, Khammam, Kamareddy, Karimnagar, Jayashankar Bhupalpally, Asifabad and Jangaon.
Simultaneously, the attached district hospitals in these districts are being upgraded into teaching hospitals with each hospital, which already has 150 to 200-beds being upgraded to 300 or 350-beds.
The entire initiative of starting these eight new medical colleges, which will be available from the next academic year i.e. 2023-24, is being taken-up with a cost of Rs 1479 crore, which has already been released by the State government.
Apart from these eight new medical colleges, the State government, in the last year or so has already incurred an expenditure of Rs 4080 crore to develop eight medical colleges and the attached district hospitals. These medical colleges with attached teaching hospitals will begin their operations from this academic year i.e. 2022-23.
The State government had spent close to Rs 510 crore in developing each of the eight medical colleges and upgrading the existing district hospital at Sangareddy, Mahabubabad, Mancherial, Jagtiyal, Wanaparthy, Kothagudem, Nagarkurnool and Ramagundam. These new medical colleges will be offering 150 MBBS seats, with an overall total of 1200 MBBS seats from this academic year.
To ensure patients in Telangana do not have to depend only on Hyderabad to avail superspecialty healthcare services in the government hospitals, the State is also developing Warangal Health City, a superspecialty health care facility with a cost of Rs 1110 crore.
“These 16 medical colleges along with the attached district hospitals and Warangal Health City will play a big role in driving the local economy, in addition to improving availability of specialist doctors, medical infrastructure, increasing PG seats, availability of specialists doctors within the campus and cutting down the overdependence on government tertiary hospitals in Hyderabad,” senior health officials said.
Once the new medical colleges are operational, the total number of government medical colleges in Telangana will jump to 28 and in the last phase, the remaining five medical colleges out of the remaining 33 districts will be taken-up, health officials said.
