The Hindu Business Line (9/22/2003) On November 9, 1979, a man in his 30s died of coronary heart disease, "because he could not afford to go to Houston and pay $20,000 for a heart surgery. That day, I was devastated when I saw his 31-year-old wife with their two children... four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter. All that he needed was a simple coronary bypass surgery that September," recalls Dr Prathap C. Reddy, Chairman of Apollo Hospitals.

This incident was the nucleus that resulted in the birth of the Apollo Hospital in Chennai in the September of 1983. Twenty years down the line, a couple of weeks ago, its Cardio-Thoracic unit in Chennai, headed by Dr M.R. Girinath, completed 25,000 open-heart operations, of which over 18,000 were coronary bypass operations. In a way the 38-year-old opened up the avenue for saving the lives of 25,000 people.

"In those days no significant coronary bypass surgery was being done in the country. So I said I must bring international quality health care for our people." Today, the group has 28 hospitals in 38 places, including Sri Lanka and Dubai, and has done 50,000 cardiac surgeries, including heart transplants "with outstanding results and at 10 per cent of the international cost. We've gone right up to liver transplants, doing 27 liver transplants not charging $500,000 but only $38,000."

You almost pounce on him to ask the obvious: how may Indians can even afford a fraction of the cost? "Health insurance is the answer. For six long years, I've been telling the prime minister, the health and finance ministers to make health insurance mandatory."

He wants contributions to health insurance right from the time when a birth certificate is issued (Rs 50) and 10 per cent of school fees. He is appalled that people would willingly insure houses and vehicles against damage or theft but not their lives. He loves to give the example of his little village Aragonda (about 160 km from Chennai) where the Re 1 per person per month insurance scheme "is working beautifully. We have a good hospital there and the scheme caters to the health needs of 52 villages in the area. After all mandatory insurance is not rocket science... South Korea did it in 10 years. If we put our heart and soul into it, we can do it in five years."

A votary of the private sector's participation in the health care delivery system, as the Government can't meet the health care needs of a billion people, he feels that though private hospitals had demonstrated that they could achieve "clinical and surgical excellence at excellent results, it is not yet time to rest on our laurels. India is ready to take on the world in the health sector in two ways," says Dr Reddy.

He hopes more and more Indian hospitals would realise and grab the opportunity to manage several services of western hospitals right from India and with help from IT enabled services. "We now have only 4 million people who are employed in health care; it can easily go up to 30 million if our hospitals exploit all these opportunities. We have to now create economic wealth for our country from our sizable health infrastructure," he says.