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Ramakrishnan: Good morning, Doctor. Which incident had prompted you to start this world-class affordable health care facility in India?

Dr Pratap C Reddy: Good morning Mr Ramakrishnan. It is wonderful to see you.

Well, as a Doctor, you start practicing. You want to treat. You want to do your best for everybody.

But, when I came back from the US, I had a disadvantage. I am a cardiologist. So I can treat patients only to one extent. In case they don't respond to medical treatment or, if they need surgical treatment, there was no acceptable programme in India. So, I used to send those who could afford, to US, mostly to Denton Cooley in Houston.

On November 9, 1979, I had a young man who had an appointment for a surgery in Houston. Unfortunately he could not go because he couldn't raise forty thousand dollars. The result was, I lost him that morning. I saw his young thirty year old wife and his two children - four year old son and two year old daughter.

I thought to myself. How many such patients are going to succumb to their ailments, just because we are not able to give them what they need at that point of time? And, how many can afford this forty thousand dollars? This set me thinking. If Indian Doctors are par excellent overseas, why can't we develop similar skills in India, with the required infrastructure?

That was the birth of the concept of providing to our people that level of care with the same high quality, but at a heavily reduced cost. I gave the name Apollo since I wanted to combine Medicine and Science.

It took me four years to build this first Hospital. It was on September 18 1983 that President Gyani Zail Singh inaugurated it.

But many couldn't and didn't believe this concept. Just when we were cutting the ribbon I saw four persons standing nearby commenting, "Oh, Dr Reddy is a clever guy. This can never be a Hospital. It could be a beautiful Hotel. How can they run such a Hospital?"There was so much of disbelief.

Rama: You proved them all wrongs.. You are a Doctor and a business-person. Which role do you cherish?

Dr P C Reddy: Doctor, doctor, doctor all the way.

Rama: How did you manage to be the catalyst in bringing quality healthcare to the country?

Dr P C Reddy: I always tell my team that if you are a wonderful factory, 99 per cent of what you produce is of excellent quality. The remaining one per cent is what you call the reject. So I tell them, please remember that the reject in a Hospital is human life. So you will have to maintain hundred per cent efficiency and you should be probably able to help almost all of them.

If you talk of heart, our results are 99.6 per cent. There could at the most be one or two in the whole world which have done our numbers and have the same results. But nobody does it for the cost at which we do. We do it for two thousand five hundred dollars. But Quality is a must. There can be no compromise on that. May be I don't know how to motivate them. I want them to motivate themselves. This is what I did.

Rama: And, how did you manage to attract the cream of Indian Doctors especially from the U S and U K?

Dr P C Reddy: If and when you have a strong infrastructure, they do come. When I came back, there was no infrastructure. My father told me that whatever I did, they (him and my mother) would admire. I could have told him there was no use in my returning to India when there was absolutely no infrastructure.

GOOD INFRASTRUCTURE

But now, that is not the case. I give them infrastructure that is equal to, if not better than what they are used to, there. Here in the beginning, they constituted thirty per cent of our total number of doctors. Now, in Bengaluru for example, they are fifty per cent. Last month when I visited UK and US, I selected fifty two doctors for two of our Hospitals. A top cardiac surgeon, young and dynamic, who is also a great researcher, from Harvard is joining our Hyderabad Hospital in the next three months. His wife, a great cancer surgeon is also joining us. Since she is joining, two more oncologists, who visited our Hyderabad unit, have expressed their willingness to join our team.

So, if you have good infrastructure, all those experts who have an innate desire to come back and serve our people readily get back. In fact what I have attracted is a very small number. In US alone today there are about fifty thousand Indian Doctors. Out of them ten to thirteen per cent are specialists. Out of these six thousand, if ten per cent have their roots back home, they start having a look at our infrastructure. They would instantly see that what we have created here is in fact better than what they are used to there.