AIIMS Nagpur signs MoU for advanced oncology and transplant unit

AIIMS Nagpur has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Health Research to build a 220-bed Advanced Centre for Oncology and Transplantation on its Sumthana campus.

The block will house two linear accelerators, a brachytherapy suite, six modular transplant ORs and a 24-bed bone-marrow transplant unit — the first such public facility in central India.

Phase I, covering radiation and medical oncology, is expected to open in Q3 2027. Solid-organ transplant services will follow in 2028 once the cadaver-donor coordination network with GMCH and IGGMC is operational.

The unit is projected to handle roughly 9,000 new cancer registrations a year, a third of which currently travel out of the Vidarbha region for treatment, according to ICMR registry data.

Staffing is the watch item. The MoU commits 142 specialist positions over three years, including 18 radiation oncologists. AIIMS Nagpur's current oncology bench is 11. Recruiting at that pace from a national pool that the upcoming AIIMS Vijayapura and AIIMS Rewari are also drawing from will not be trivial.

Funding is split 60:40 between DHR and the AIIMS corpus, with a ₹312 Cr capital outlay and a ₹48 Cr/year recurring grant indexed to inflation. Patient billing remains within AIIMS's existing means-tested fee structure.

What this means for residents: families currently making the Mumbai or Hyderabad trip for radiation cycles will see local capacity from late 2027. Transplant access takes longer — but the donor-coordination piece, often invisible, is the harder problem and it is now formally in motion.