A state of the art cancer institute is coming up in the summer capital Srinagar by the year end, an official spokesman said today.

The modern cancer institute at the Sher-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Soura, is expected to be operationalised by the year end, he said.He said this was informed in the 44th meeting of the SKIMS Governing Body, chaired by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti here yesterday.Addressing the meeting, Mehbooba, who is the chairperson of the Governing Body, underscored the need for taking SKIMS to higher levels of excellence and making it among the top healthcare institutes of the country.

She impressed upon the management of the institute to earmark considerable amount of funds and manpower for research activities besides its role as a major tertiary care hospital in the state.The Chief Minister reviewed the functioning of SKIMS in general and performance of some recent technological interventions like PET scan and directed timely procurement and induction of equipments, diagnostic kits and other accessories for the upcoming cancer centre to save the time in operationalising of the same.

The PET scan inducted recently at the institute is giving satisfactory results. Earlier, patients had to go to outside the state for the PET scan.Mehbooba was informed that pursuant to her decision of shifting the control of Sumbal health centre to SKIMS during her public outreach programme at Bandipora in north Kashmir, the hospital authorities have decided to develop it as a satellite centre for modern tertiary care.An action plan for the same has been drawn up, the spokesman said.He said other issues of management, expansion and procurement of the hospital also came up for discussion during the meeting.