‘Vimarsh’: Dr. Devi Shetty on ‘Making Healthcare Affordable’, at the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), on 19 December, 2017

Opening Remarks by Dr. Arvind Gupta - Director,

It gives me great pleasure to invite Dr. Devi Shetty to deliver a talk on ‘Making Health Care Affordable’. Vimarsh is one of our flagship dialogues where we organise talks by eminent persons on contemporary issues. In the past we have had the honour of having former President Dr. Abdul Kalam, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Soli Sorabjee, the President of Afghanistan Md. Ashraf Ghani, and most recently Foreign Minister of Russia, Mr. Sergey Lavrov.

Dr Devi Shetty is one of India’s leading Heart Surgeon. After doing his MBBS from Kasturba Medical Collage in 1979 and MS in General Surgery from the same college in 1982, he trained as a Cardio thoracic surgeon under National Health Service UK during 1983-1989. Dr Shetty has made outstanding contribution in the field of medicine. He was first surgeon in India to perform heart surgery on a New Born baby 25 years ago. He built a large paediatric cardiac surgical programme thereafter.

His mission statement is to “make health care affordable” to the populations of third world country. To accomplish his mission, he has led from the front. He set up the Narayana Hridayalaya where Dr. Shetty and his team has performed over 1,19,000 major heart surgeries out of which 40 percent were on children including new born babies.

He is not just a renowned surgeon. He has been at the forefront of several outstanding initiatives in the field of health care. For instance he conceptualized ‘Yashashwini’ micro health insurance scheme which was launched by the Karnataka State. The farmers paid a premium of 5 cent per month and had access to over 800 types of surgeries in over 5 hundred hospitals across the state. Today over 3.5 million farmers have enrolled for the scheme by paying a monthly premium of 30 cents. In a decade of successful implementation of the scheme, over 5,80,000 surgeries are performed of which about 70,000 are heart surgeries. Yeshaswini has been the largest micro health insurance program in the world.

Along with Dr. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon, Dr. Shetty has devised Arogya Raksha Yogana micro health scheme for the urban poor. He heads the Narayana Health Group with 29 hospitals in 17 cities. Health City Cayman Islands has been his first major overseas project. Under his leadership Narayana Hrudayalaya manages world’s largest Telemedicine Programme having carried out 53,000 consultations so far.

Dr. Shetty is recognized for his thought leadership in creating National Health Policies and developing ingenious solutions for affordable healthcare delivery. He is regularly invited by the state and central governments of India, trade bodies and policy think tanks.

He has been bestowed with the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan (2012) for his service to society. Having served with Mother Teresa after leaving a career in the West, he imbibed the motto of ‘Service to Man is Service to God’. With Col DPK Pillay here, he hopes to expand health care training to our states in the North East. Already, some 25 young people from Tamenglong district in Manipur are being trained in nursing at Dr. Shetty’s hospital – the idea, I understand, is to create a cohort of skilled, efficient, health workers who can then scale up the provision of essential health services in the region they come from.

I won’t hold up Dr Devi Shetty any longer as the audience that is gathered here today is indicative of the interest his talk has generated .

Over to Dr. Shetty …