the goan I network
PANAJI
Latching on to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for narrowing down the nationwide gap in the doctor-patient ratio, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane has swiftly moved ahead in his bid to promote an additional private
medical college in Goa and has already shortlisted two consultants to take the move forward.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst and Young (EY) are the two multinational consultants on Rane’s radar to advise the government on his plans to set up a private medical college attached to the South Goa District Hospital in Margao.
“Consultants have already been shortlisted. PwC or EY will prepare the plan,” Rane who addressed a press conference in Panaji said of the plan he unveiled last
week where he said a private player who has shown interest in setting up the college will be provided land adjacent to the new District Hospital in Margao.
“We have the 10 acres of land that will be required opposite the District Hospital for the College which could be linked to the hospital,” Rane said, adding that the Prime Minister has already announced that the Centre will pump in Rs 75,000-crores and he is eager that Goa does not lose out on netting its share of this fund.
Rane claimed the move will ensure Goan students get additional medical seats
and claimed that it will also tackle the problem of shortage of doctors. He said, the proposal will be for a 100-seat medical college.
Meanwhile, Rane said he will be proceeding to Delhi where he will meet the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, P K Mishra, to pursue the file pertaining to Goa’s request for being allocated an All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
He said land for the AIIMS has been tentatively identified at Dharbandora. He also said, that alternative sites are also available elsewhere including in Sattari where he claimed to have identified around 22-lakh square metres of barren land.
Rane’s move to promote a private medical college to be attached to an existing government-owned health facility meanwhile could potentially trigger a controversy.
Ironically, a similar move to allow a private medical college in Goa over three decades ago was abandoned by the then government
led by Rane’s father and Poriem MLA Pratapsing Rane following massive state-wide protests.
Currently, Goa has just one medical college, the State-owned and historic Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim, which incidentally has the distinction of being Asia’s first set up by the erstwhile Portuguese regime in the mid-nineteenth century in its original avtaar - Escola Medico Cirurgica da Goa.
