Panvel City Municipal Corporation body plans mother-and-child, civic hospitals in New Panvel

The residents of Panvel and its peripheries won’t have to shell out money in private hospitals as the Panvel City Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is planning to develop a mother-and-child hospital (MCH) and a civic hospital in New Panvel.

The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) is in the process of transferring a plot of land measuring two acres at Sector 17 for these hospitals. The PCMC officials are conducting surveys in that area and a detailed project report (DPR) of the mother-and-child hospital will be presented before the general body next month.

Sanjay Jagtap, city engineer of PCMC, said, “We will divide the said plot into two parts for developing the two hospitals. In the first phase, we will develop the mother-and-child hospital as there is no such dedicated hospital in this area. As per our plan, an eight-storied building will be developed for it and it will have around 150 beds. Besides, there will be operation theatres, OPD, vaccination centres, IVF centres and delivery rooms among others.

Around 10% of the beds will be reserved for an ICU.

Jagtap, however, did not say anything about the budget as the project has not been approved yet.

“When this project will see some developments, we will start conducting surveys on the other half of the plot for developing a civic hospital. We have plans to develop a hospital similar to the one NMMC has in Vashi. However, it will be too early to say much about that at this moment,” he added.

At present, PCMC has six health centres in Panvel town, New Panvel, Kamothe, Kalamboli and Kharghar. Those centres are, however, not enough to cater to the 8.50 lakh population of the city.

Vinayaka Mane, 47, an activist from Panvel, said, “Due to the lack of health infrastructures, the residents of these areas are heavily dependent on the private hospitals. The economically weaker section is the one that is suffering the most.”