Govt’s upcoming multi-speciality hospital to include medical college as well

AVAILABILITY OF STNM HOSPITAL FACILITIES TO SMIMS TO THIS END IN MARCH 2013
GANGTOK, 09 Jan: The facilities of STNM Hospital will be available to the students and faculty of Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences only till March end, 2013. As per a directive issued by the Health Department, the utilization of facilities of STNM Hospital and of specialists and medical officers is allowed till 31 March 2013.
This decision, as informed, has been taken as a consequence of the decision of the State government to start a new multi-specialty hospital cum medical college at  Socheythang, Sichey. In fact, as per the directive, the decision to allow Manipal hospital to continue the use of the facilities of STNM is based on this above mentioned decision of the government.
The 575-bedded multi specialty hospital at Socheythang, apart from being a state-of-the-art government hospital will also be a government medical college. This will be the first government-owned and run medical college in the state. In this light it is assumed that when the structure comes up and is functional, the facilities of STNM Hospital would be required by the government medical college.
This would be imperative in view of acquiring recognition from the Medical Council of India for the government medical college so as to make the degrees being awarded by it recognised. On the other hand, the government had taken a Cabinet decision in the year 2011 to increase the number of beds in the proposed hospital and make it a 1000-bedded hospital.  However the decision to enhance the capacity of the hospital was withdrawn due to technical reasons.
The hospital is still under construction and had run into several bottlenecks; however it is expected that the hospital should be constructed and ready some time later this year. As per the directive issued by the Health Department  it allows the “utilization of facilities of Sir Thutob Namgyal Memorial (STNM) Hospital, Gangtok and peripheral health institute in East District of Sikkim for clinical material for teaching purposes and utilization of Specialists and Medical Officers (all groups) for imparting clinical training and teaching to medical students of Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences at Sir Thutob Namgyal Memorial (STNM) Hospital by Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences (SMIMS) and Manipal Education and Medical Group till 31st March, 2013 only”.
Thereafter, it will have to be seen whether SMIMS can develop and sustain itself to meet the Medical Council of India standards in order to get the MCI recognition if it has not done so already.