Singapore, Sep 2, 2010: Varian Medical, a manufacturer of medical devices for treating cancer with radiotherapy, has established its first education center in India to train medical physicists and technologists working on the company's cancer treatment systems.

The center in Mumbai, equipped with 16 planning system workstations and the VERT training system for radiotherapy treatment simulations, is expected to enable the country's growing number of radiotherapists and medical physicists to train without having to travel overseas. The official opening, which was attended by Ms Kanta Chokkra, President of the Association of Medical Physicists of India, was carried out by Ms Kolleen Kennedy, Varian's VP Customer Support Services.

"Radiotherapy use is growing rapidly here and we want to do whatever we can to equip the increasing number of practitioners with the experience they need locally," said Mr Michael Sandhu, Varian's regional head of operations. "This training center will give us the opportunity to customize our training solutions to the specific needs of Indian clinicians bringing, in the long term, added value to their practices."

Mr Vivekanand Tathvadkar, Varian's India country manager, added, "In the current economic climate people are not able to travel as extensively as they used to, so a facility here in India gives them the opportunity to get hands-on experience without leaving the country. We also hope to attract trainees from neighboring countries."

"There are fewer than 400 radiotherapy machines in India and almost half of these are outdated cobalt machines," added Mr Sandhu, "but we are seeing a rapid investment in new equipment and many Indian hospitals are now able to offer the most advanced treatments available in the world, such as image-guided RapidArc radiotherapy and radiosurgery." RapidArc, the company's readiotherapy device is said to deliver precise image-guided IMRT (intensity modulated radiotherapy) up to four times faster than conventional IMRT.

According to estimates from the Cancer Foundation of India, India has 2 to 2.5 million cancer cases requiring treatment at any point in time and almost a million new cancer cases are diagnosed there each year. Cancer diagnoses are expected to continue rising in India as the health care system expands and more cases are detected.

The Mumbai project is the fifth such education and training center established by Varian globally, following similar initiatives in Las Vegas (US), Beijing (China), Zug (Switzerland) and Buc (France). Along with the education center, Varian's Global Customer Services group is investing in a new parts depot at its Mumbai headquarters, involving a significant investment in ensuring parts and products are readily available locally for customers.