CHENNAI: Chief Minister MK Stalin will lay the foundation stone for a super specialty children’s hospital and research centre on the King Institute campus in Guindy on Tuesday.
The facility, coming up on 6.5 acres at a cost of Rs 417.07 crore, will be India’s first dedicated super specialty hospital exclusively for children and will be completed within 18 months, a release said.
The hospital will function as a comprehensive tertiary-care centre. The six-floor complex will have a total built-up area of 4.63 lakh square feet, including separate residential blocks for postgraduate students, nurses and professors, along with dining and utility facilities.
It will have specialised paediatric departments including cardiology, oncology, neurology, nephrology, haematology, paediatric surgery and a bone marrow transplant unit. Emergency and trauma care services, neonatal and paediatric intensive care units, dialysis facilities, blood bank, operation theatres and post-operative wards will also be part of the proposed facility, the release said.
Stalin will also launch a state-wide free Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination programme from Nandambakkam on Tuesday to prevent cervical cancer among 14-year-old girls. As per official estimates, a total of 3,38,649 girls have been identified for the programme. It will be piloted in Dharmapuri, Perambalur, Tiruvannamalai and Ariyalur districts, covering 30,209 beneficiaries. The HPV vaccine, which costs up to `14,000 in private hospitals, will be administered free of cost.
The ‘Nalam Kaakkum Stalin’ health camps, under which 1,053 camps have been held so far, has benefited over 15.88 lakh people across the state, the release said.