PM Modi dedicated Northeast India’s first AIIMS at Changsari near Guwahati.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 14 inaugurated the first All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the Northeast at Changsari near Guwahati.

The PM dedicated AIIMS Guwahati and three other medical colleges each in Kokrajhar, Nagaon, and Nalbari among various projects worth more than Rs 3,400 crore in Guwahati, Assam on Friday.

The PM had laid the foundation stone of the AIIMS, built at a cost of Rs 1,120 crore, in May 2017. The state-of-the-art hospital has a capacity of 750 beds including 30 AYUSH beds and will admit 100 MBBS students annually.

Among the projects the Prime Minister laid foundation stone on Friday is the Assam Advanced Healthcare Innovation Institute (AAHII) within the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati complex.

Reportedly AAHII will be a research and innovation centre in the area of medical sciences, which includes a 500-bed ‘connected’ multi-speciality hospital, spread over 12 acres and to be built at a cost of about Rs. 546 crores.

AAHI will facilitate cutting-edge inventions and R&D in medicine and healthcare, identify the nation's unique problems related to health and promote the development of new technologies for solving those problems.

Addressing a gathering during the inauguration ceremony, the PM said efforts to enhance connectivity in the Northeast are reflected in the improvement in the road, rail, and airport infrastructure in the last nine years.

“Along with physical infrastructure, social infrastructure also received a massive boost in the region as education and health facilities have been expanded in an unprecedented manner,” he said, attributing the change to the government’s service-oriented approach.

“We are moving forward with the mantra of India’s development through the development of the Northeast… The government’s policy, intentions and commitment are not driven by self-interest but by the spirit of ‘nation first and people first’,” PM Modi said.

PM Modi while referring to the long-festering challenges of the region, said, development becomes impossible when the politics of dynasty, regionalism, corruption, and instability start to dominate.

He illustrated this by giving the example of the AIIMS which was established in the 1950s no effort was made to open another one in the other parts of the country until Atal Bihari Vajpayee took the initiative as the Prime Minister.

Modi said since 2014, the BJP-led government started work on 15 AIIMS with treatment and courses having begun in most of them. “The AIIMS Guwahati is an example of the fact that our government fulfils all the resolutions,” he added.

The Prime Minister also launched the Aapke Dwar Ayushman campaign by distributing Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana cards to 1.1 crore eligible beneficiaries. This scheme aims to provide an annual health cover of upto Rs. 5 lakh.