Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 29 claimed his government has proposed and approved more numbers of All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the past four years than there had been in the last 70 years.

Modi was speaking at the AIIMS here. He inaugurated a tunnel connecting the main building to its trauma facility. The one-km long motorable tunnel will facilitate the transfer of the patients and their relatives, doctors, instruments and medicine between AIIMS, Ansari Nagar and Trauma Centre.

"We want to provide the best healthcare to our people at the lowest possible cost. We have proposed and approved more numbers of AIIMS than it was done in the past 70 years," Modi said. He also laid the foundation stone of the National Centre for Ageing at AIIMS which will be built in a year and a half at an estimated cost of Rs 300 crore. The Centre with 200-bed capacity will provide the older population with multi-speciality healthcare.

He also inaugurated a 300-bed Powergrid Vishram Sadan at AIIMS. At Safdarjung Hospital, Modi inaugurated a 555-bed super-speciality block and a 500-bed emergency block. "Over Rs 1,300 crore was spend on the Safdarjung Hospital to make it technologically advance," he said.