Shafi Shiddique
Alive News Service:
Faridabad: it was the day when Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar laid the foundation stone for the Amritanandamayi Math’s new 2,000-bed Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences & Research Centre (Amrita Hospital) in Greater Faridabad, in the presence of Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri, Vice Chairman of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math here today.
The Union Minister of State for Social Justice & Empowerment, Mr. Krishnan Pal Gurjar and a host of other dignitaries also graced the occasion, which marked the beginning of construction of the state-of-the-art healthcare facility spread across nearly 100 acres in Sector 88, Greater Faridabad.
Swami Amritaswarupananda welcomed the dignitaries and read a statement from Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma), the world-renowned humanitarian and spiritual leader who is the hospital’s founder: “May this new hospital become an abode of service to humankind and a place of solace for the sick. We should never forget that we require two types of health — external and internal. While external (bodily) health is no doubt important, internal health, which involves cultivating a sharing and caring attitude and compassion for the less fortunate, is no less crucial.”
Mr. CM said: “India has a long tradition of saints working for social reforms and helping the poor. Mata Amritanandamayiis a shining example of this. She is an embodiment of love and compassion who has tirelessly worked for the welfare of entire humanity. She considers service to the poor as the greatest form of worship. Her Math is doing yeoman service around the world in the areas of education and health. I congratulate the citizens of Faridabad and all of Haryana for her decision to construct a 2,000-bed super-specialty hospital and medical college in Faridabad. It will benefit not only this industrial city, but also surrounding regions like Palwal and several districts of UP.”
Mr. Krishnan Pal Gurjar unveiled a scale model of the Amrita Hospital at the ceremony. “With a planned facility of 2,000 beds, the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences & Research Centre is set to become the largest hospital in Delhi-NCR,”
Dr. Prem Nair, Medical Director, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi(the forthcoming hospital’s predecessor),said: “The new hospital at Faridabad will feature the complete range of specialities, super-specialties and Centres of Excellence. These will include a heart institute, an institute for high-precision cancer diagnosis and therapy, organ transplantation, an advanced centre for neurosciences and epilepsy, an institute for diabetes and metabolism, a centre for liver and biliary diseases, an institute for minimally invasive and robotic surgery, a burn unit, a centre for bone and joint diseases, an advanced centre for lungs diseases and transplantation, an institute for physical medicine and rehabilitation, a centre for spinal disorders, an advanced laboratory for molecular diagnostics, an advanced centre for medical imaging, and interventional radiology, among others. It is our goal to have most, if not all, of these facilities provided and rapidly scaled with the new hospital’s launch.”
Amrita Hospital at Faridabad will also have a strong focus on mother-and-child healthcare. The new hospital will include a highly specialised multidisciplinary Children’s Hospital with maternal and foetal medicine and all paediatric subspecialties, including paediatric cardiology, heart surgery and transplantation, rheumatology, endocrinology, pulmonology, neurosciences, paediatric genetics, gastroenterology, paediatricorthopaedics and paediatric and foetal surgery. Added Dr. Nair: “It’s important to have a place where complete medical assistance and treatment for mother and child, including advanced paediatric medicine, can be attained under one roof. This is something lacking in many localities throughout India, as many private hospitals do not see mother-child care as monetarily sustainable.”
