Closing down Advanced Cancer Centre at Bathinda amounts to playing with lives of cancer patients: Harsimrat Kaur Badal
Coronavirus Punjab: Former Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Saturday said closing down the Advanced Cancer and Diagnostic Centre in Bathinda to convert it into a Covid Centre would amount to playing with the lives of cancer patients.
Even as she advised chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh to review this decision and use other available facilities including the AIIMS hospital here for dedicated Covid care.
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Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who even wrote to the chief minister on this issue, said the Advanced Cancer Centre here was the last hope for cancer patients of the Malwa belt who could not travel to the Cancer hospital at Acharya Tulsi Cancer Institute at Bikaner due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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She said the Baba Farid University hospital had also been turned into a dedicated Covid Centre leaving the Advanced Cancer Institute here as the only resort for cancer patients.
Badal said as many as 150 to 200 patients availed themselves of radiotherapy at the Cancer Centre here daily and that there was a two a half month waiting period to avail radiotherapy treatment.
She also discloses that five to ten surgeries were also conducted at the Centre on a daily basis.
Asserting that the chief minister had not taken feedback from the ground while taking a decision to close down the Cancer centre, she said “the radiotherapy machines cannot be shifted elsewhere. Moreover in case there is a leak during the shifting process it would cause a catastrophe”.
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