The 200-bed Institute of Rotary Cancer Hospital (IRCH) in AIIMS will shift to the institute's outreach campus in Jhajjar in the next few years. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has given its final nod.
The hospital will be renamed National Cancer Research Institute and will come up in 50 acres of land on the 300 acre campus. The land was allocated free of cost to AIIMS by the Haryana government in 2009. The cancer institute will be a 600-bed facility, with 200 of the beds dedicated to clinical research and another 200 for palliative care (treatment to relieve the pain in patients who are in advanced stages of cancer). Apart from shifting the existing branches of medical, surgical and radiation oncology to the new campus, new centres of nuclear medicine, preventive oncology and psycho-oncology — counselling of cancer patients — will also be set up at the cancer institute in Jhajjar. The project will cost around Rs 2,100 crore and will be implemented by the Hospital Services Consultancy Corporation India. The Jhajjar institute will also have a 24x7 cancer emergency, currently absent on the AIIMS campus.
