The Hindu : Endoscopy training centre inaugurated

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 11, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Endoscopy training centre inaugurated

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, MARCH 10. A new training centre for medical professionals to learn skills for gastrointestinal endoscopy was inaugurated by Morishima, International General Manager, Olympus, here on Tuesday.

Set up at the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology at a cost of Rs. 2 crores, the training centre aims at reducing the acute shortfall in qualified gastrointestinal endoscopists in India.

According to a press release issued by the institute, there are only 4,000 trained gastrointestinal endoscopists catering to the billion plus population of India, whereas in USA, Europe and Japan the ratio is 1:20,000. Regular checks and therapeutic endoscopy has led to a drastic fall in gastric and colon cancers in these developed countries. India, on the other hand, has only 50 therapeutic endoscopy centres, the release said.

The training centre has four components including animal lab for advanced endoscopy and laproscopy training, digital library with more than a 1,000 videos of endoscopy procedures and international tie up with endoscopy centres in Hong Kong, Boston, Los Angeles and Germany for extended training sessions over 2mb data lines.

D. Nageshwar Reddy, Director of the Institute, said the centre was one of the largest in Asia and would train gastroenterologists from all over the Asia Pacific region.

He added that the institute had already trained 200 gastroenterologists in different procedures.

He also said that the Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy of India had asked the Government and the Indian Medical Council to recognise gastrointestinal endoscopy as a separate speciality and have degree courses in it.

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