NEW DELHI, Feb 26: An ambitious Rs 1,368 crore project to set up the first-ever Army patterned Research and Referral hospital and an AIIMS-like college to render tertiary and specialised treatment to paramilitary personnel and their families was unveiled today.
The institution, Central Armed Police Forces Institute of Medical Sciences (CAPFIMS), is expected to come up in a period of two years on a 51.41 acre campus in south Delhi’s Maidan Garhi area.
It will render tertiary and specialised treatment to troops and families of forces like CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SSB, NSG and Assam Rifles which function under the command of the Union Home Ministry.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said the need for having such an institution for the over 9-lakh personnel strong paramilitary forces “was being felt for a long time”.
The hospital will boast of some of the best medical care infrastructure in the country which is currently deployed by the AIIMS and R and R of the Army in Delhi.
Besides having a multi-speciality hospital, the CAPFIMS will also have a medical college, two separate institutes of nursing and paramedics, a residential campus for students and doctors, an air ambulance unit and a 24×7 mobile hospital unit for the troops.
The project, which was conceptualised by the Home Ministry in 2009, got an in-principle approval of the Union Cabinet in 2011.
Once operational, the CAPFIMS will have 1,500 beds, spread across speciality, general and ICU wards while the AIIMS patterned medical college will offer a total of 530 seats in various streams of medicine, paramedics and nursing.
Shinde said the professionals who pass out from the medical college will have to serve for a mandatory minimum period of five years in the paramilitary forces as they are suffering from an acute shortage of doctors.
The hospitals of the CAPFIMS will also be open for the families of the force personnel.
The paramilitary forces, at present, have a chain of small medical centres and composite hospitals spread across the country and this will be first comprehensive health care centre for the sick and injured of these forces on an all-India basis which at present is only available for the armed forces.
The Army’s R and R hospital in the national capital is a pioneer in this domain.
Once operational, the hospital and medical college will draw strength and faculty from the existing medical cadres of these forces and also through direct recruitment.
The campus will also have the facility of an air ambulance and helipad so that injured or sick secuity personnel could be flown in from an operational theatre to the CAPFIMS in a helicopter.
The Border Security Force, country’s largest border guarding force, has been made the nodal authority for the development and process of this ambitious health care project of the Home Ministry.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Shinde expressed hope that the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), which is creating the building infrastructure of this centre, will be able to do so in a time-bound and quick manner. (PTI)
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