COVER STORY
Padma Bhushan will help achieve goals
CONTRIBUTION TO INDIAN HEALTHCARE
BM Birla Heart Research Centre, Kolkata:
Created a 120 bed exclusive cardiothoracic surgical unit for the Birla family of Kolkata as its Clinical Director and Chief Cardiac Surgeon. Over here performed India’s first neonatal cardiac surgery on a nine-days-old baby. Performed India’s first dynamic cardiomyoplasty operation for end stage heart failure. Performed India’s first video assisted PDA ligation. Performed India’s first video assisted open-heart surgery (closure of Atrial Septal Defect.) Standardized off pump BD Glenn shunt most appropriate for developing countries. Introduced the concept of free heart camp for villages of Northeastern hill states as a simple screening mechanism to detect early stage heart disease completed 8000 surgeries in six years after leaving United Kingdom.
Manipal Heart Foundation:
Vice-Chairman and Senior Consultant Cardiac Surgeon proved the concept of large-scale heart surgery by performing twelve heart surgeries a day. Performed first heart transplant of Karnataka State Standardized beating heart Bypass grafting, which was in its nascent stage.
Narayana Hrudayalaya Group of Hospitals:
Developed a concept of 5000 bed health city in 30 acres with infrastructure to perform 60 heart surgeries a day. Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore performs 24
over 30 major heart surgeries a day, one of world’s largest heart hospitals. Narayana Hrudayalaya performs largest number of heart surgeries on children with heart disease attracting patients from 56 countries. Narayana Hrudayalaya Bangalore has world’s largest pediatric cardiac surgical ICU under one roof with 80 critical care beds. In 2008 launched a programme to add 30,000 beds all across India in five years. Collaborated with six different state governments of India for this project.
Yeshaswini Micro Programme
Health
Insurance
Developed a term called Micro Health Insurance. Six years ago launched health insurance with a premium of 11 cents per month for 1.7 million farmers of state of Karnataka in partnership with Karnataka State Cooperative Society, which has now grown to cover 3 million farmers. Yeshaswini proved to the Indian healthcare policy makers that the only way for working class and poor for affordable healthcare is through Micro Health Insurance Programme, which is being launched with different names in different states. Brought down the cost of major heart surgery from Rs. 1, 20,000/(₤1517.07) in the year 1989 to Rs. 65,000/- (₤821.75) in 2006. n
This recognition by the Government and the people of India is going to strengthen my resolve for implementing two points on my agenda. The first point that I have on my agenda is health insurance for all the poor people of our country. We have 750 million Indians spending Rs. 150/- per month just to speak on the mobile phone. All we need is Rs. 10/- out of this Rs. 150/- to ensure the best health insurance program one can think of. This can be implemented just by minor policy changes by the government and my sincere belief is that our government will definitely be willing to bring about required regulatory changes to make this happen. The second wish I have is to enroll 2000 children from rural India to medical colleges every year. We started one such effort on a small scale in West Bengal six years ago, under a program called Udayar Pathey wherein children in Class 7 from rural West Bengal who are passionate about becoming doctors are given a scholarship of Rs. 500 per month. These children make a commitment that they would study hard to become doctors. We mentor and motivate them to join medical colleges on merit. We also support them by organizing a student loan for their studies and help them with their other requirements if necessary. I hope that this model to can be successfully replicated across the country to ensure better healthcare for our future generations. This award will definitely strengthen our resolve to achieve these goals.
Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty
Chairman, Narayan Hrudayalaya Bengalore Mar - Apr 2012