Kolkata, Sep 7 (IANS): Aimed at servicing 100 cities belonging to the tier 1 and tier 2 categories, India's largest multi-specialty hospital chain Narayana Health (NH) plans to open around 60 super-specialty hospitals across the country, an official said here Saturday.

"We have identified 100 cities in the tier 1 and 2 classes that do not have adequate health facilities. We will invest Rs.1,000 crores and plan to build 60 to 70 hospitals in a span of five years," said Narayana Health vice chairman, managing director and group CEO A. Raghuvanshi.

"Most hospitals in metros are city-centric as they cater to mostly people in the metropolis. Distance becomes a major factor for people living in smaller cities and villages.

"Each of them will be low cost centres and cost will be significantly low in comparison to metros," said Devi Shetty, founder of Narayana Health.

As per the expansion plans, NH will construct six to seven hospitals per year in cities like Lucknow, Guwahati, Siliguiri etc.

Facilities like cardiology, cardiac surgery, neurology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, gastroenterology, urology and nephrology would be provided.

"West Bengal will be given priority. Our target is that every hospital should be a heart and cancer centre," said Shetty.

NH, which recently announced its plans to open a 300-bed superspecialty hospital in Lucknow, is commissioning a hospital in Assam's Guwahati.

"Construction will begin this year. Initially there will be 200 beds but later on, we will add more beds to make it a 350-bed hospital. Another hospital will come up in (northern West Bengal's) Siliguri that will be a 150-bed centre," said Shetty.

Under NH's Udayer Pathey endowment programme, 15 students from underprivileged backgrounds in West Bengal were awarded scholarships Saturday to boost their dreams to pursue medical education.