KOCHI: The Cochin Cancer Research Centre (CCRC), which has scripted history by conducting its first surgery even before the construction of its own building started, is raring to achieve another feat by setting up an in-patient wing in the facility that is temporarily given to it by the Ernakulam Government Medical College (EMC). It is in the payward building of the EMC that the OP wing of the CCRC is functioning now. Recently, the CCRC got its first director Dr Moni Kuriakose who made use of his three fellow surgeons to conduct the first surgery.
Now he has gone one step further to accommodate the patients in the limited facility at the payward building so that realtime care is given to them post-operation. He envisions it to be a regular affair once the operation theatre set apart for CCRC at EMC is ready. "We have already started surgeries and they will now be conducted as and when needed. So post-operative care also is our task and inpatient facility is needed for that. We have limited personnel for that purpose and I have written to the government to allow inpatient facility and personnel also so that CCRC functioning can be taken to the next level now itself without waiting for its own premises," Dr Moni Kuriakose said.
The current premises have facility to contain 20 beds and immediately four or five patients could be accommodated. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is set to lay the foundation stone for the CCRC building on Sunday and the works will start immediately since the project has received all clearances. Meanwhile, a controversy has erupted over not extending an invitation to Prof M.K. Sanu for the foundation stone laying ceremony.
Prof Sanu is the chief patron of the Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer Movement that spearheaded a campaign for setting up the CCRC from the time when Justice Iyer was alive. Prof Sanu graced the function when Mr Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated the OP wing of CCRC and volunteers of the Iyer Movement have now protested against his non-inclusion in the Sunday's function. The previous government had tried to ignore Justice Iyer also in the same manner, but in vain.
