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Q: Doctor Reddy what do you think this hospital complex would do for healthcare in Sri Lanka? What difference would it make? A: For any individual and nation, health is very important. Health and education are the two prime factors. We think of education for our children - nobody says its wrong – but few care about planning for health…. You want to see that you give a good education to your child. You plan your housing, marriage …and so on and so forth. Somehow health is not on the top of the agenda…you don’t think that you should plan for health. This is an unplanned event and this is where I think we need to do something about. Number one, create facilities and (two) bring awareness among people. This Apollo complex is still not active. Apollo is the Greek Sun God’s name, and it depicts medicine and science. So we want to see that you bring in the management of sickness but our greater thrust is on wellness. How do we keep people well? So our total Apollo life concentrates on – from infancy to old age, touching lives of millions of people – how to stay well. It’s preventive medicine. We do it for the public and we do it for the doctors. Now, to think that why do you do it in Colombo… it is because, at any given time 10% percent of the patients at the Apollo Hospital in Madras alone are from Colombo. Q: Is there any special treatment that they come for? A: They come for cardiac treatment; they come with neurological complaints … now most come there for cancer treatment and all major surgeries and undiagnosed illnesses. It’s not just to Apollo. I think at any given time we see about 100 people from Sri Lanka in the main and speciality hospitals, you probably would see another thirty or forty in Madras Medical mission, which is a cardiac hospital and in some other hospital another twenty or thirty. But there are still another fifty or sixty who still go to the good old Vellore hospital. Q: India, particularly Madras is well known for maxillofacial surgery? A: Yes. Faciamaxillo services. The place is called Sankara Nethralaya and it has become world famous now. Q: Would the Colombo Apollo Hospital offer such treatment, any affiliations planned? A: I just concluded a deal… the eye care department will be Sankar Nethralaya. ‘Sankar’ means ‘priest’ and ‘Nethralaya’ – eye. So, Apollo hospital for the first time will have Sankar Nethralaya as a part of it. Q: Dr Reddy if we were to get back to the maxillofacial surgery I was talking of and corrective surgery for deformities… A: Yes Plastic and cosmetic surgeons do this. It’s a cosmetic surgery. We are not only going to be having the management of ordinary illnesses…we have 300-500 beds here but our concentration is going to be to provide facilities which are already available here with a higher quality, but more importantly, we plan on bringing almost all facilities that are available for people anywhere in the world. This goes back to how and why Apollo began in Madras. (People don’t know… that I am not a rich man nor am I an entrepreneur.) I did this because… in 1979 I spent ten years in US and came back. When I was practising, I lost a patient, a man who was only 38 years old, he died because he couldn’t afford to pay $30,000 and go to Houston for his surgery. And when I saw his wife who was 31-years old with a 7 year old son and a two year old daughter, I said to myself, “This tragedy shouldn’t befall another person because if Indians are par-excellence overseas… why shouldn’t we do that for our own people?” That was the birth of Apollo. And it was not easy. Almost the same thing happened when we thought of Apollo here in Colombo. I used to see patients coming from here… they used to express their gratefulness that such facilities are available for them in Madras…. they could have never afforded to go to the UK or the US paying those costs). But … there are some people who cannot come to Apollo. Even that they couldn’t afford because the travel, the stay… sometimes it is almost double their medical cost. They pay the hospital 200,000 Rupees, their other expenses are another 200,000 Rupees such as air-tickets, cost of stay, etc., for persons accompanying the patients. So this is where I think we all came to a point saying… “Why shouldn’t we consider” and it all happened… there is only one person who is responsible for it. That is, Her Excellency the President of Sri Lanka. Q: What was the role she played? A: I think when we approached Her Excellency… I still recollect. I went with my wife and daughter and said that this is what we are planning to do…she said, “I’m all for it.” From the first second she said, “I will see that you get 100% support.” So, she asked the BOI to clear the papers as early as possible, then she allotted a land and this land allocated to us is to be paid for in 27 instalments. You know, some other hospitals got land free here… that’s a different matter. But at least this is at a concessionary rate. If they gave me a land out of Colombo it cannot be used for people with chronic illnesses. So it had to be centrally located. So she granted this centrally-located land, she used to ask her ministers to follow up what is needed for the completion. At one time, we were stuck with our plan for clearance. For the clearance they said, You show us the parking space for your 40 ambulances. I said, “It’s crazy! Why should I have 40 ambulances parked in the hospital? If its 40 ambulances it should be parked all over the Island and Colombo… all over the place.” In India I always say… because this is the first professionally done hospital and nothing like this has ever happened before…., “if there are a million bricks in Apollo hospital …there are a million problems, but here in Sri Lanka we had only 100 problems!! So, the President made the ministers follow-up on our progress. I did not have to go the President for everything. Q: Do you foresee any further problems? A: I think almost everything is done now. However we must see what more has to be done. I think the Government has been very corporative. For example when we needed to regularize matters concerning doctors from overseas and their medical credentials, permissions so on and so forth, and permission for… nurses from India.’ Q: Overseas… do you mean Indian doctors? A: Indian doctors plus non-Indian and non-Sri Lankan professionals who are who are well qualified. Q: Does this create an opportunity for many medical professionals, Sri Lankan professionals who are now practicing in the West to come back? A: I think this is the greatest thing… a true reversal of the brain drain as it were. One year ago when I tried I did not get even one response. In the last three months after they saw this is almost nearing completion……..almost every day there is one call. Sometime earlier we announced saying that there would be an opportunity for medical professionals to come back. Q: Doctor Reddy you have allocated 120 beds for trauma-care out of the original plan of 350 beds. Why so much of emphasis on trauma-care? A: When we say trauma, top of all it is pre and post trauma. Q: Post surgery trauma, post conflict trauma? A: I think every 10 minutes there is a major accident taking place, one death takes place in an accident. Sri Lanka is no exception this happens all over the world. So I think we need to take care of them, if you see those ambulances there…we have just four now… Q: Are you in operation now? A: Within the next two days. We are just getting every department to do a trial run. Q: You would begin with the Indian nurses I presume? A: Yes. Q: Are you not satisfied with the nurses or nursing care here? A: we have tried here. I have advertised more than thrice. The response here isn’t very good. There is a shortage of nurses. And there are only government nursing schools. They have a commitment with the government for 10 years. So the first ten years they can’t leave and if they stay twenty years they are eligible for a pension. So we have permission to bring adequate nurses to run the services and we are going to have our own training school. This I have discussed with the President … I asked her, I would like to have a nursing school for 100. She said, Why 100? You should train 200 nurses Dr. Reddy. I said that I needed a place to house them and all that. She said, I’ll give you a place. And that was the type of response she always gave. Even when I met her in Delhi this time, she was all up-beat on the hospital. She said I am so happy you have achieved … She narrated from day-one the problems that I faced and now she says it’s a reality. Our people are looking forward to this. Q: Are you concerned about competition or are you concerned about other people being concerned about your arrival? A: I think in the beginning everybody would have that impression. When I started the Madras Apollo all the doctors in town thought they’d have to close down their nursing homes. Now they have all realised that Apollo is a compliment to them. Because there are times they need that additional support for an individual and additional investigation, because this hospital in Colombo…. you cannot equate this even with the Apollo hospitals in India. It’s better than all what we already have. Because here, we have the 2002 technology. You can compare it with the world’s best medical centres. When I started in Delhi, my Madras and Hyderabad hospitals felt jealous. So you will have every single discipline here. So the doctors even if they are a little diffident at the beginning and think – “what is this Apollo is going to do to us” - they will realise that we will compliment their medical education, would certainly compliment the care they are giving to patients. Q: Telemedicine facility is a much talked about area in your Hospital could please talk us through? A: It is going to play a very crucial role. I will repeat Bill Clinton’s words. When President Clinton visited India we connected a village where we were running a telemedicine centre with our special staff in the Hyderabad Hospital. A patient in the village with a heart problem was examined. The Doctor at Hyderabad diagnosed the disease and told the mother “Please bring the child during the vacation to us and we’ll set this right and when school reopens she can join.” Then he added another word saying she would lead a normal life thereafter. I could see happy tears running down Bill Clinton’s face. First he asked me “Doctor Reddy is telemedicine in the US advanced to this level?” I said that I wanted the President to give a message. He said, “It is a wonderful thing that you are doing here. The rest of the world must follow your lead. So people at remote places can get the benefit of hi-technology.” Today I have connectivity for 19 telemedicine centres in India between Madras and its rural areas. This number is going to become one hundred within a very short time. And I hope to make it a thousand. But what I feel is a moral obligation to give connectivity to the Afro-Asian region - Africa and Asia, Middle East, Far East all these places – we need to give them connectivity so that whenever they need they have help. Q: There are some 4.5 billion people who have no form of exposure to any kind of information, modern technology aside. Connectivity is one thing that is keeping them away from the rest of mankind. A: It’s changing very fast. My grandson knows so much more of computers than me. First this hospital will be connected with all other hospitals and through our hospital it will also connect them with some of the US hospitals to discuss difficult problems with doctors there. But we also do CMA programmes online through this telemedicine line. For example we transmit health awareness programmes for the villages. So the village people watch it like they are watching TV. They watch this through the computer. So we hope that there will be at least 10 to 20 telemedicine centres within the island that will stay connected to this hospital and if the government wants we can also connect them to the national hospitals. The National hospitals could also be connected to us. So, they can either approach national hospitals or reach us. I think it’s going to be of tremendous benefit to patients. I believe that we are as good global citizens. When it comes to health we all want the best. So there are two things that must begin. We need to increase the health care facilities in the country, but the more important thing for countries like ours is to be prepared. Even in the most advanced nations nobody can afford to pay from his pocket for a brain surgery or a heart surgery. How they do that is, they pay what they call a small amount for health insurance or to a social security fund. In America no American can afford expensive treatment. What he does is he pays regularly his monthly fee. Seventy-two percent are thus insured. Another twenty percent are covered by state or central social security system. The small lot which are not covered, this is where Mrs. Clinton tried, she couldn’t get to cover them. She is still trying. I think this is where countries like Sri Lanka must attempt to popularise a mechanism whereby people will have access to health care when they need it. Because, it is an unplanned event. When it occurs then we run around to get the funds to meet the cost. Q: What would be the cost of treatment here, how comparable would it be with the rest? A: It’s not going to be cheap. We have created facilities, world-class facilities… in all areas including the living areas, and the patient rooms. It is very essential because cleanliness does not mean beauty. It is to encourage people to keep their living areas clean and that cleanliness is connected with health. Because it is that, which can cause infection. Apollo is probably one of the lowest when compared to the best hospitals even in the world. That’s because we concentrate on cleanliness. This is where the so-called duty is combined with that in-built system, saying ‘keep it clean’. Approximately, that would be about ten percent more expensive than the comparable facilities in this setting. But some of the things will become cheaper. A guy comes here for a major operation. The precautions we have taken so that he will not get infected, the diagnosis that is quick and fast, our hospital information systems, they will all accelerate the speed with which things are done so you save time for the patient. Because of our cleanliness and the several steps we have taken to control infection… he will have fewer complications. Overall I expect to send patients back soon. Surgeries that we do here, for example heart surgery… Majority of the surgeries that we do we use the latest techniques. So the patient is really fit to go home on the fourth day. In Madras when a patient stays, we tell the patients, “Please go home your room charge is Rs. 4,000, I’ll give you 8,000 rupees refund. This is how we make better health, early recovery and save costs for them. But more than anything else I consider…all as global citizens, not a citizen of a developing country. I believe we are all global citizens; we need to get the same level of care. Anything that’s happening anywhere in the world today Apollo is able to give. Whether it’s in medicine or surgery or transplant… our first bone marrow transplant was done for a patient from Sri Lanka. Today 130 bone marrow transplants. Abroad it costs $400,000. We are doing it for $ 35,000. Q: Heart transplant? A: My first Heart transplant is alive after seven years. The success rate for heart transplants is around 98-99%. The moment they walk into this building they are going to think… “My god I am going to be fleeced here” but they will go back and say, “I thought it’ll be so expensive”.I’m talking of the same experiences they had in Madras or Hyderabad or Delhi when they walked in. Q: Do you expect foreign patients? A: I want this to become a regional centre. The way we have created the technology here, today’s 2002 technology and the type of doctors that we have, I think I expect this to become a regional centre. I was just speaking to our media people, I said, “You must bring people from Mauritius, Maldives and from Indonesia – the fourth largest country is Indonesia”. And I understand Sri Lankan Airways have said that they’ll promote this together with us. This should become not only a foreign exchange saving for the country it should earn foreign exchange for the country. That’s what we are doing in India. In India today more than ten percent of my services are used by people coming from abroad and nobody need go abroad. Because I do everything, I am doing liver transplant, heart transplant, bone marrow transplants, everything that’s done anywhere in the world we are doing. So I think that’s what should happen. So I’m calling this a regional centre. As I said my other doctors and the team are going to feel jealous when they come here. It is not just the local doctors and local hospitals that will be jealous, believe me, my own in Madras, Hyderabad and Delhi when they visit here, they’re going to feel jealous because they’ve never seen this type of CT, this type of operating rooms, the post-ops, the intensive care unit is just unbelievable. Q: What are you going to have in Dubai? A: In Dubai I have a clinic and I’m opening a hospital in two months from now. Q: Doctor, what is your system of clinics and hospitals? A: We have only clinics now running in-house. But later on we will spread out. Why should somebody with fever come all the way here? I believe that we should have by next year at least three, four in Colombo. But more than anything else I am interested in opening 100-150 beds in other places, in collaboration with others. I need not stress this. There could be existing hospitals who promise to come up to our level of quality standards. If they say they will come up to that level we should be able to attach them with our services and help them run with the same efficiency. Q: When was the Colombo operation first mooted with the President? A: I met her in 1998. But earlier we have been talking to her. She said “I want Apollo here”. I love this country. I came here first in 1957, I led a student delegation and from that time onward I had great love to this country and I am happy that we are here. Dr. Pratap C. Reddy – A Profile
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(The Apollo
Lanka Hospitals Complex will be ceremonially declared open by President
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe
on June 7 2002)
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