Prathap Chandra Reddy (born 5 February 1933) is an Indian cardiologist and entrepreneur, the founder and chairman of Apollo Hospitals. The hospital he opened in Madras in 1983 was the first in India to be run as a company, with shareholders and professional management, and offered advanced treatment for which Indians had until then gone abroad. It was the beginning of the country’s private hospital industry.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Prathap Chandra Reddy |
| Born | 5 February 1933, Aragonda, Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh |
| Age | 93 |
| Education | Madras Christian College; Stanley Medical College, Madras (M.B.B.S.); training in the United Kingdom and United States |
| Occupation | Cardiologist, entrepreneur |
| Founded | Apollo Hospitals (1983) |
| Awards | Padma Bhushan (1991), Padma Vibhushan (2010) |
| Spouse | Sucharitha Reddy |
| Children | Preetha Reddy, Suneeta Reddy, Shobana Kamineni, Sangita Reddy |
Early Life
He was born in the village of Aragonda in the Chittoor district into a landowning farming family. He was educated in Madras, at Madras Christian College and Stanley Medical College, and went abroad for specialist training, first to Britain and then to the United States, where he trained in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and worked at a hospital in Missouri.
Return
In about 1970 his father wrote asking him to come home and do something for his own country. He returned to Madras and set up a cardiology practice at a small hospital.
The Turning Point
In 1979 a patient of his, a man of thirty-eight with a wife and small children, needed a bypass operation. The surgery was not then available in India at the standard required. The family could not raise the money to send him to the United States, and he died.
Reddy calculated that the operation could be done in India at a fraction of the foreign cost if a hospital with the right equipment and staff existed, and decided to build one.
Apollo
The obstacles were of a kind that had nothing to do with medicine. Banks were not permitted to lend to hospitals, which were not classed as an industry. Imported medical equipment bore very high duties. A hospital could not be a public company. He spent four years in government offices in Delhi and Madras getting the rules changed, with the support of Indira Gandhi and later Rajiv Gandhi.
Apollo Hospital, with 150 beds, was opened in Madras on 18 September 1983 by the President of India. He persuaded Indian doctors working in America and Britain to come back and staff it.
Growth
- **Hospitals:** Hyderabad in 1988, Delhi in 1996 and then across India and abroad; the group has about seventy hospitals
- **Heart surgery:** the group has performed more cardiac operations than almost any other in the world, at a cost far below that in the West, with comparable results
- **Transplants:** among the first Indian centres for liver and multi-organ transplants
- **Pharmacies:** the largest chain of chemists’ shops in the country
- **Telemedicine:** in 2000 a satellite link was opened between his native village and the hospital in Chennai, inaugurated by the American President, Bill Clinton, the first such rural centre in India
- **Training:** nursing colleges, medical colleges and a foundation for health education
Patients began to arrive from Africa, West Asia and neighbouring countries, the start of what is called medical tourism. Other groups followed Apollo’s example, and private hospitals now provide the greater part of hospital care in urban India. Critics point out that the corporate model serves those who can pay, and that the promise of free beds for the poor made in return for cheap public land has not always been kept.
Public Role
He has pressed governments to expand health insurance, on which he advised, and campaigns on the prevention of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, which he calls a coming tsunami of non-communicable disease.
Recognition
- Padma Bhushan (1991)
- Padma Vibhushan (2010)
- Lifetime achievement awards from medical and business bodies in India and abroad
Personal Life
He is married to Sucharitha Reddy. His four daughters run the group: Preetha as executive vice-chairperson, Suneeta as managing director, Shobana Kamineni and Sangita Reddy in charge of pharmacies and of hospitals and new ventures. He is still at work in his nineties.
A different answer to the cost of treatment, based on volume and low fees, was worked out by the heart surgeon Devi Shetty and by the eye surgeon Govindappa Venkataswamy.
Featured image: Prathap C. Reddy in March 2014. Photo by Sadhguru, licensed under CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
