The Apollo Hospitals group will set up a medical college in the city with 150 MBBS and 50 postgraduate seats and a 1,000-bed hospital.

The state government has given a 14-acre plot at Calcutta Riverside in Maheshtala, on the southern fringe, to the group for setting up the medical college. The institution will be the fourth private medical college in Bengal.

The township is coming up on 262 acres on the banks of the Hooghly, about 20km from the city. Apart from residential apartments, Calcutta Riverside includes a medical college, a film city and a sports academy.

“With the Apollo Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Calcutta will become one of the health hubs. We’ll bring faculties and new technology,” Prathap C. Reddy, the chairman of the Apollo Hospitals group, said at a programme where chief minister Mamata Banerjee laid the foundation stone for three facilities at Calcutta Riverside.

He said the medical college would be part of a bigger project by the Apollo group, which will have 17 other colleges, including ones related to paramedics, nursing and allied health services.

Mamata said she had formed a group of ministers to get the project cleared. “In the coming days a lot of doctors will be produced from here,” the chief minister said in her speech at the programme.

Apollo officials said the Rs 300-crore project would be completed in five years and in two phases. In the first phase, there will be 100 MBBS seats and a 500-bed hospital.

“We are planning to bring faculty from abroad,” said Rupali Basu, the chief executive officer of Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals, Calcutta. Once the building that will house the medical college is ready, the group will apply for a no-objection certificate from the health department. After getting the certificate, the group can apply for an inspection by the Medical Council of India.

Bengal has 2,450 MBBS seats, nearly half of which were scrapped by the medical council earlier this year because of lack of adequate infrastructure at the colleges.

The council later restored the seats after the colleges promised to set up the required facilities.

Along with the medical project, the chief minister laid the foundation stone for Kolkata Studios and Sourav Ganguly’s school and sports academy. The former Team India skipper was present on the occasion.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Calcutta> Story / by The Telegraph Special Correspondent / Tuesday – December 02nd, 2014