MRI scanners for 8 teaching hospitals soon

Monday May 1 2006

HYDERABAD: Eight of the 10 teaching hospitals in the State will soon be equipped with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners. Each scanner costs between Rs 2 crore and Rs 3 crore and they will be set up in public-private partnership or P3 mode.

The eight teaching hospitals are: K G Hospital (Vishakapatnam), MGM Hospital (Warangal), Government General Hospitals at Kakinada, Guntur, Vijayawada, Kurnool, Anantapur and Sri Ramnarain Ruia Hospital at Tirupati.

In the remaining two hospitals - Osmania and Gandhi - the scanners would be set up shortly with Government funds. At present, patients are being referred to the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences for the same.

According to official sources, the Andhra Pradesh Health & Medical Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation had called for Expression of Interest two months ago for which the response has been good. Over two dozen private firms have come forward to provide the scanners.

All these formalities might take about four to five months. “At present, a technical committee comprising experts had been constituted to go through the proposals. Another committee will finalise the short listed bids after negotiations with the firms,” incharge-managing director N Raghuma Reddy told ‘this website’s newspaper’.

While the private firms will set up the equipment and collect the charges, the government would provide them facilities like space and power supply among other things. In clinical practice, MRI scanners are used to distinguish pathological tissue such as a brain tumour from normal tissue.

One of the advantages of an MRI scan is that, according to current medical knowledge, it is harmless for the patient. It utilises strong magnetic fields and non-ionising radiation in the radio frequency range compared to CT scans and traditional X-rays. MRI scanners have superior imaging of soft tissues and is being utilised to specifically locate tumours within the body. It provides comparable resolution with far better contrast resolution, especially in a foetus.