Charitable foundation to help poor patients
Express News Service, Friday 14th November, 2003

Vikram Hospital and Heart Centre has launched Narayan Setty Memorial Charitable Foundation to make interventional treatment, including bypass surgeries affordable.

Speaking to newsmen here on Wednesday, hospital Managing Director Vikram said that a corpus fund has been set up to help the poor.

Funds from the trust will be used to subsidize cost of treatment like coronary angiogram, angioplasty and bypass surgery. Donors wishing to help could contact the hospital, he added.

He said around 40 poor patients underwent angioplasty at the interventional cardiology camp organized in association with the Mysore Medical College Alumnus Association.

About seven patients were implanted with pacemakers worth Rs. 1.5 lakh, free of cost.

Govindaraj Subramani, Interventional Cardiologist from USA conducted the camp with the required consumables worth Rs. 10 lakh, he added.

The high cost of inputs is due to non availability in local market.

About 99 percent of drugs are imported.

He added that there was a major problem in meeting the demands of the poor, as foreign drug companies are yet to know Indian purchase capacity.

Studies, he said, show that South Indians are more prone to cardiac arrests than the North Indian counterpart.

Indians are five times prone to heart attacks compared to Japanese and Americans, due to genetic reasons, high cholesterol and small size coronary arteries.

He also observed that diabetes is a major cause for heart disease.