P.K. Shreemathi promised and stalled. K.K. Shailaja let it slip away. Veena George let it drift. And Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan never lifted a finger. Sixteen years after a fully built hospital was handed to the Left for nothing, the only occupants the Malabar Cancer Institute and Research Centre at Mavoor Thengilakkadav has ever known are bats and stray dogs. The turn now falls to the new Health Minister, K. Muraleedharan. The question Malabar is asking is simple: will he walk into that building, or will he look away like the rest?
Six and a half acres of land, along with a finished building and its equipment, have been left to stand and rot. Governments came and went. Health ministers came and went. The announcements were recycled with each election. Not one cancer patient has ever been treated there.
The story begins in 1997, not in Kerala but in Dubai. At the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel, under the banner “Crack the Crab,” Dr. Hafsath Kaderkutty convened the first public meeting. Hindi film actor Sunil Dutt, Malayalam actor Madhu, Dr. Suresh, and Dr. Rajagopal of Kozhikode Medical College, and much of the Gulf’s Malayali leadership turned up. The campaign sent a jolt of cancer awareness across Kerala. It is worth remembering that the Malabar Cancer Centre at Thalassery had not even been announced at the time.
Back then, a cancer patient in Malabar often had to travel the length of the state to Thiruvananthapuram for treatment. Mavoor, which carried one of the highest cancer burdens in Kerala, was chosen as the site. Justice Fathima Beevi laid the foundation stone in 1998 and followed its progress closely. I still remember how she would enquire about it. In 2001, Governor Justice Sukhdev Singh Kang inaugurated the hospital. Malabar embraced it.
Until 2010, treatment was free, funded by a collective of donors in Kerala and across the Gulf. Patients and their accompanying relatives received medicine, food, and lodging at no cost. A radiation therapy unit was added. But as the cost of equipment and day-to-day operations rose, the burden became too heavy for the trust to bear alone. Several voluntary organisations offered to take over and run the institution. The trustees chose the government instead, guided by a single conviction: that the poor should receive free treatment regardless of caste, creed or background. In hindsight, that decision proved disastrous.
In 2010, Health Minister P.K. Sreemathi accepted the hospital from the trust. The government announced that it would become a sub-centre of the then-active Malabar Cancer Centre in Thalassery and eventually develop into a modern treatment and research facility. Nothing happened. In 2016, the government transferred it to Kozhikode Medical College. Then District Collector Prashant Nair announced the handover on Facebook. The Medical College administration later insisted that responsibility rested with the district administration, while collectors came and went without meaningful progress. E.T. Muhammed Basheer MP repeatedly pressed for action. He too was ignored.
In October 2014, a meeting chaired by the Chief Minister, attended by the Health and Social Justice ministers, resolved to submit a detailed proposal under the Central Government’s Tertiary Cancer Centre Scheme. The proposal was duly submitted. What became of it remains unclear. The local MLA, P.T.A. Rahim, raised the issue in the Assembly in December 2015, February 2016, March 2017 and again in 2019. On one occasion, Health Minister K.K. Shailaja stated that orders had been issued to convert the facility into a screening centre. On another, the official response was that “possibilities are being examined.”
In November 2022, the District Collector, the District Medical Officer and representatives of Kozhikode Medical College met and resolved to move the project forward. A year later, those resolutions had produced no visible result. Last October, a meeting chaired by Health Minister Veena George reportedly decided to make the facility functional under the district panchayat. Months later, there was still no progress. When P.T.A. Rahim raised the issue again in the Assembly, the response was that the proposal had only recently reached the department and a decision would follow. After years of similar assurances, few were surprised.
At one point, faced with this prolonged neglect, Dr. Hafsath Kaderkutty prepared to approach the courts. Her position was straightforward: if the government had no interest in running the institution, it should return it to those willing to do so. That was not a political demand. It was a demand rooted in the rights and dignity of patients. Yet she continued to hope that the state would eventually fulfil its promise. It never did.
Now the government has changed, and many people have placed their hopes in a new administration. The health portfolio is in new hands. Sixteen years of neglect have created an opportunity to correct a long-standing injustice.
K. Muraleedharan, this issue now rests on your desk.
I first came to know you in the early 1990s, when you were working to get Karipur Airport off the ground and I was working for Khaleej Times. We met on several occasions during those years. The airport stands today as a reminder that projects once considered difficult can indeed be completed.
The question before you is simple. Will this hospital finally be made functional, or will it remain another abandoned public promise?
Visit Thengilakkadav. Walk through the building where bats now circle through empty corridors. See the equipment gathering dust. Speak to the people who spent years building this institution and to the families who still wonder why it was allowed to decline.
If the state can run it, then let it run it properly. If it cannot, then let the government return it to the trust with dignity or partner with capable organisations that have demonstrated their commitment to public service. Organisations such as KMCC and institutions like the CH Centre have already shown what can be achieved through dedication and efficient management.
The tragedy of Thengilakkadav is not the failure of a building. It is the failure of successive administrations to honour a promise made to cancer patients and their families.
Sixteen years have passed. The files have moved. Committees have met. Announcements have been made. Yet the hospital remains silent.
The question Malabar is asking is simple: Will this government finally bring life back to a hospital built for the poor, or will it look away like the others?
(The writer, Dr. K.T. Abdurabb, was actively associated with the Malabar Cancer Research Centre, Thengilakkadav, in its early days through to 2010.)
