Thiruvananthapuram, July 19 (IANS): Union Minister of State for Tourism, Petroleum & Natural Gas Suresh Gopi on Friday assured that he would take up with the Centre the need to expedite the ambitious projects of Campus-II of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB), here to make it a hub of advanced medical research and medicine development.

After a visit to the campus and extensive interaction with the Director and senior scientists, Gopi said he would take up with the ministers concerned the need to fast-track the projects undertaken by RGCB’s Campus-II, including the setting up of a referral hospital for cancer patients needing palliative care.

The RGCB is an institute under the Department of Biotechnology, Union Ministry of Science and Technology.

“I came here for a 30-minute session with the institute’s scientists. But it went on for two-and-a-half hours. Many people do not know about the advanced scientific research projects taken up by the institute and its competence and efficiency,” said Gopi.

The minister recalled the services rendered by the RGCB during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially as a leading swab testing facility.

The RGCB’s Campus-II is the hub for research on vaccines and immune therapeutics, molecular diagnostics, biomarkers, chemical and nano-biotechnology, and tropical disease biology.

RGCB Director Dr Chandrabhas Narayana said the interaction with the Union minister was highly engaging and fruitful.

He said the minister was briefed on the RGCB’s proposal to develop a 150 to 200 bed referral hospital in PPP model for cancer patients, especially those needing palliative care. The project, envisaged as a facility with ICU-convertible beds, is estimated to cost Rs 400 crore.

Narayana said the minister also promised to look into a proposal to develop the campus as an international medical tourism hub with advanced facilities to hold international medical events and conferences.

“Medical tourism concentrating on traditional medicine can be augmented by testing of patient samples from the baseline test like regular blood parameters to high-end proteomics, metabolomics, genomics etc. The Ministry of Tourism could extend all the support for carrying forward this initiative,” said Narayana.

Another major project that came up during the interaction was that of intervention in the health of tribal communities to address genetic health issues found among them. For this, the RGCB has a project of preparing a health card for tribal people with the genetic features recorded in them.