Hyderabad: Despite the lack of support from the Centre, the Telangana government has spent Rupees 6,669 crore in the last 18 months for the development of specialized health facilities in district hospitals, setting up of 16 medical colleges and a super speciality Warangal Health City.
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 to ensure the availability of speciality healthcare facilities. Eight medical colleges with 100 MBBS seats each are being up at Vikarabad, Siricilla, Khammam, Kamareddy, Karimnagar, Jayashankar Bhupalpally, Asifabad and Jangaon.
The attached district hospitals in these districts are also being upgraded into teaching hospitals. The bed capacity in these hospitals is being upgraded to 300 or 350-beds from the existing 150 to 200.
The state government has sanctioned a sum of Rs 1479 crores for these medical colleges to commence at the earliest for the next academic year (2023-2024).
The state government, in the past year, has reportedly 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 operations this year.
The state government had spent around Rs 510 crore in the process of developing each of the eight medical colleges and upgrading the existing district hospital at Sangareddy, Mahabubabad, Mancherial, Jagtiyal, Wanaparthy, Kothagudem, Nagarkurnool and Ramagundam. The new medical colleges will offer a total of 1200 MBBS seats this academic year.
The state is also developing Warangal Health City, a super speciality healthcare facility at a cost of Rs 1110 crore in order to ensure accessible super speciality healthcare services in government hospitals.
“The 16 medical colleges along with the attached district hospitals and Warangal Health City will play a major 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.
Health officials also said that once the new medical colleges become operational, the total number of government medical colleges in Telangana will hike up to 28.
Follow on Twitter | Posted by Masrath Fatima | 
