The foundation stone for the the country's first Hadron therapy centre was laid by prime minister Manmohan Singh at the Tata Memorial hospital in Mumbai.

The Rs 425-crore National Hadron Beam Facility and a Cancer Centre for Women & Children will be funded “entirely by the government through the department of atomic energy”, the PM said on Friday. He further said the facility is likely to be completed within the next four years.

This is the first such facility in India and it places India among a select group of countries in the world to offer this advanced treatment for cancer,” Singh said adding that fighting and preventing cancer is a top priority for the government.

The facility will cater to around 1500 people every year and will also provide accommodation (dharamshala) to 250 patients and their attendants coming from different parts of the country. Additionally, for residential requirements of the medical fraternity, a hostel facility for 700 persons will be constructed.

In the last two weeks, foundation stones for two other cancer treatment facilities — Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Centre by Tata Memorial Centre in Chandigarh (on December 30) and National Cancer Institute in Jhajjar near Delhi under the aegis of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) (on January 3) — were laid by the PM. 

In addition, Singh said that he will soon launch the construction of another regional hub of the Tata Memorial Centre in Vishakapatnam which will serve patients in south India.

Speaking on the occasion, Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, said his government had made available 5 acres of land to establish the Hadron facility and other centres to Tata Memorial Centre free of cost.

Hadron beam facility constitutes a part of radiation therapy for cancer treatment. In the conventional radiation therapy, x-rays of high-energy photons are used to destroy tumors which also affect normal tissue. On the other hand, the Hadron beam therapy uses irradiated beams made of charged particles of protons and other ions such as carbon  which penetrate the body with little diffusion and destroy cancerous tissues in a more focussed manner thus causing  minimum  damage to healthy tissues. Also, Hadron therapy enhances the quality of life during and after cancer treatment.