Devi Shetty to set up 5000-bed heart clinic

Narayana Hrudayalaya Institute of Cardiac Sciences plans to build a 5,000- bed super-cum-multi-specialty hospital, "Narayana Health City" in Kolkata.

The first phase of the hospital, a 1000-bed facility, will be operational within the next ten months, said Dr Devi Shetty, chairman, Narayana Hrudayalaya Institute of Cardiac Sciences in Kolkata. The whole project, which will be spread over 25 acres of land, is expected to finished within the next three years.

"In the hospital, 50 per cent of the services will subsidised for the poor," said Shetty.

The initial investment in the project would be around Rs 100 crore. The hospital will have three specialisation units-- cardiology, neurology and orthopedics. Dr Shetty is also pitching with the state government to promote health insurance scheme in West Bengal, on the lines of "Yashaswini", a health insurance scheme in Karnataka, under which about 2.4 million farmers living below-poverty-line farmers can afford costly surgeries at a low cost. To begin with, the Narayana Hrudayalaya hospital through a tie-up with National Insurance Company, plans to offer health-insurance scheme to about 4 lakh school teachers in West Bengal. "Initially, we would like to start the insurance scheme for BPL families as pilot projects covering small groups like school teachers, " said Shetty.

In order to encourage village students to take up the medicine as a profession, on Tuesday, he launched a government-aided scholarship scheme for village students under which meritorious students in secondary schools will be awarded Rs 500 per month, till class 12, after which they will be assisted and guided in getting admission in medical colleges.

Initially, 250 students from 25 government schools will be chosen for the scholarship. The money will be dispensed to students through ICICI bank.

"These days good number of medical students are from affluent and middle-class families, and very few are from the villages. It is difficult for a poor farmer to afford the fees of about Rs 3,000 as monthly fee in government medical colleges," said Shetty.

There is a severe shortage of cardiologists and neurosurgeons in the country as at least 25 lakh heart-surgeries are required every year in the country, but only 70,000 are performed, said Shetty.

"Now a days the trend is to go for specialisation in subjects like radiology, whereby a doctor can earn good salary with four to five hours daily work- hour," said Shetty.

Currently, there are about 36,000 trained doctors in the country, whereas the requirement is about 1 lakh, he added.