Tatas: Fighting cancer

With nearly one million new cancer cases diagnosed every year in the country, the Tata Trusts have committed nearly Rs 1,200 crore in the next two to three years to set up new cancer facilities and strengthen existing infrastructure in the country to bring world class treatment closer to patients, reported The Hindu (TH) of June 7, 2018. The Trusts plan to build four new cancer hospitals and equip secondary level hospitals and community health centers with facilities to carry out chemotherapy, radiotherapy and minor surgeries, stated the report.
In May 2018, the Rs 130-crore, 180-bed Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital built in the place of the Railway Cancer Hospital in Varanasi started operations. Seven kilometers from this Hospital, the Trusts will build a 340-bed hospital at a cost of Rs 350 crore inside Banaras Hindu University campus, said the report. T. Anbumani, consultant with Tata Trusts, told the newspaper that the Hospital will be constructed on 5.86 lakh sq ft and made ready by December 2018. He added that the Hospital would become a speciality center for solid tumours and Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital, a center for blood and pediatric cancers.
According to Anbumani, a new cancer hospital is being built near Tirupati. He was quoted in TH that, "In Guwahati, Tata Trusts plan to construct a new hospital inside the government medical college. In Andhra Pradesh, the center and state government will jointly build a 100-bed hospital with the support of Tata Trusts. In states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand there is no facility to treat breast and pediatric cancers. These new centers will be a boon for them,” Anbumani told TH.
The Tata Trusts are reportedly sharing a part of the Rs 2,000 crore cost of setting up 19 cancer hospitals in Assam. The Times of India reported on May 21 that state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the foundation stone for the hospitals will be laid in the presence of Tata Trusts chairman Ratan Tata on June 17.
The Tata Trusts have further teamed with the office of the Bombay’s Commissioner of Police and the Mumbai Police Foundation to "conserve and archive historic police records, and to plan for a Police Museum,” states a notification of May 10, 2018 on the website of the Trusts. This will be the first police museum in the city, adds the note.
The Times of India noted on May 11 that the museum will be set up at the police headquarters in Crawford Market, and is expected to be ready in two years. It will occupying six rooms and a corridor on the ground floor of the heritage building. Final designs are reportedly "almost ready.” The exhibits are proposed to cover the period from 1864 when the first police commissioner of the city Sir Frank Souter assumed charge and will include "rare photographs, uniforms, weapons and criminal memorabilia…”
The project conceptualized by the Commisioner Dattatraya Padsalgikar, "will seek to generate awareness — internally through the archiving project, and externally through the museum project –— about the rich history of the city’s police force,” according to the note.