Dr. Devi Shetty urges to 'Think Different' at the second lecture of Global Leadership Series organised by FORE School of Management

The Communication Area at FORE School of Management, New Delhi organized a lecture on the theme of 'Think Different' as a part of the Institute's Global Leadership Lecture Series.

The lecture was delivered by Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, Chairman, Narayana Health, Bengaluru.

The healthcare industry is an 8.2 trillion-dollar industry and is the largest in the world. Industries related to food, IT and oil don't compare. The IT industry gives India 140 billion dollars of annual remittances. Today, India has an opportunity to earn 100 billion dollars of remittances just by investing in education of doctors, nurses and medical technicians who come from the lower economic strata. In the world today, there is a shortage of 80 million workers, and India can produce most of them.

Elaborating on the importance of thinking differently, Dr. Devi Shetty said that the healthcare industry can be the largest employer for women. He emphasized the importance of having earning-women from lower economic strata. He shared an example of what has been observed in Kolkata. If a man is given a job to clean floors and paid 12000 rupees per month, he will spend 6000 on himself and 6000 to family. If the same is given to the wife, she spends the whole amount on the family. When a woman from the lower economic strata gets a job, she becomes an empowered and assertive woman. She is able to teach the art of making choices to her children. Lot of poor people remain poor because they repeatedly make wrong choices. This is because, when they were children, they weren't taught the art of making choices. In order for India to be a great nation, there is a need to create employment opportunities - and one way of achieving that is to empower women from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Dr Shetty also shared his view on the scenario of public hospitals in India, which are not living up to the mark. He said, "I have gone through the Indian medical policies on healthcare and scanned the documents of every developing country. The public healthcare policy revolves around Malaria, TB and HIV. They collectively kill 3.5 million people a year across the world. But lack of access to safe surgery kills 17 million people. This does not include heart or brain surgery, but three commonly done surgeries - laparotomy, surgery for compound fracture and emergency caesarian section for obstructed delivery."

If hospitals are created across the country to do these three surgeries, which are not that difficult, all cases of Malaria, TB and HIV can be ideally managed for free. If there is a change in strategy with significance given to surgery, then all the other aspects can be done virtually free. It is a matter of asking the right question.

Dr Shetty also shed light on the importance of having affordable insurance plans. He said, "Around 15 years ago, for three consecutive years, Karnataka had severe drought. We convinced the government to launch health insurance for farmers. The strategy was to sell insurance with a premium of Rs. 5 per month, approximately the amount of money spent on tobacco every day."Farmers were encouraged to not spend on tobacco for a day and spend it on health insurance instead. The other condition was that the government should be a reinsurer. The insurance called Yeshasvini Health Insurance was launched in Karnataka 15 years ago with over 4.5 million farmers paying the money. Launched with the Karnataka state cooperative society and a network with 400 hospitals across the state, close to 650 to 1000 types of surgeries were done. The insurance was for all kinds of surgeries. At the end of 15 years 1.2 million surgeries were done, just by paying 5 rupees a month.

For changes to happen, India needs to change the way hospitals are built. A multispecialty hospital is not available everywhere because it requires a lot of resources. Dr Shetty shared Narayana's bid to build a model hospital with 300 beds to do different surgeries. The hospital cost 35 crores instead of 200-300 crores. While it usually takes 3 years to build a large hospital, but this was built in only 6 months. LNT was approached to build the hospital and they took up the challenge and built it. The model hospital is situated in Mysore which has pleasant weather, so there is no air a conditioning system. Unlike the usual belief that a central air-conditioning is required to control the infection, the reality is that air-conditioning is the commonest source of infection in a hospital. The best sanitizer at anyone's disposal is fresh air and sunlight.

Dr Shetty highlighted the importance of sharing targeted knowledge. We suffer from the notion that in order to do a particular task, one needs to have a high level degree. Young women, with school completion background, are trained in critical care assistance at the Narayana nursing college. They are trained to assist in heart surgery and they have become adept in it. Similarly, involving patient families in the process of treatment helps in the post-operative care. The family members gain adequate knowledge related to the monitoring and proper care-giving which speeds up the recovery of the patient.

Dr Devi Shetty concluded by saying that the world is not ruined by the activities of bad people, but the inactivity of the good people. Good people need to come forward to contribute and drive change. He urged the students that whatever they choose to do, has to address the multitude of complexities and needs of 1.3 billion people to help the whole ecosystem of India. The only way it can be done is by thinking differently.

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( With inputs from ANI )

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