After a delay of over one year, the UT Environment Department has finally given environment clearance to the project of 250-bed hospital in Post Graduate Institute of Medical and Research here.
The 250 bed hospital would come up adjacent to the existing Nehru Hospital and the Kairon block in PGIMER.
The environment clearance was a major roadblock for this project as a number of tress is to be axed to start the new construction.
Santosh Kumar, Director, UT Environment Department while talking to The Pioneer said, “The Department has given environment clearance for the construction of new 250 bed hospital in PGIMER.”
After the additional 250 beds, the PGIMER would be a 1,850 bed hospital.
At present, the entire bed strength of the hospital is around 1,600 beds which include beds in the specialty blocks like the Advanced Eye Centre, Advanced Cardiac Centre and the Advanced Paediatric Centre.
This additional block is expected to give some respite to the already patient-
overloaded premier medical institute.
At present, there is over 100 percent bed occupancy in the emergency and over 5000 patients’ daily report in OPDs in PGIMER.
This additional facility will cater primarily to cancer patients. Besides offering more beds to the patients in some of the specialties, those looking for private rooms will have a total of 170 rooms.
The addition of the new block will be the first addition of general beds block after the Nehru Hospital, which was built over four decades ago.
PGIMER, being a premier health institute, a large number of patients from the country, especially from Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir come here
for treatment.