Devi Prasad Shetty : The Man who Changed & Treated Million Lives
A man with the vision of creating a world with low-cost healthcare, Devi Prasad Shetty, is an Indian cardiac surgeon and entrepreneur. He has completed 15,000 heart surgeries to date and is the chairman and founder of a chain of 21 medical centers in India named Narayana Hrudayalaya. Poor people in rural northern India refer to him as Bypasswale Baba because no one who visits his hospital leaves without a bypass, and his inspiring journey is a must-read for every individual.
Devi Prasad Shetty - Childhood & Education
- Devi Prasad was born in a village in the Dakshina Kannada region of Karnataka, India, on 8 May 1953. When he was a student, he learned about Christiaan Barnard’s world-first human-to-human heart transplant and chose to pursue a career in surgery.
- He attended St. Aloysius School in Mangalore and then moved on to St. Aloysius College in Mangalore to study medicine. Shetty earned his MBBS in 1979 and went on to Kasturba Medical College to pursue a postgraduate degree in general surgery before earning his FRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons in England.
Devi Prasad Shetty : Career Timeline
- 1989-2000
- Shetty returned to India in 1989 and worked at BM. Birla Hospital in Kolkata, where he performed India’s first newborn heart surgery in 1992. Ronnie, a nine-year-old infant, was the recipient of the successful procedure.
- He also operated on Mother Teresa in Kolkata and served as her physician after a heart attack.
- Devi moved to Bangalore after a while to work for Manipal Hospitals, Bangalore, where he founded the Manipal Heart Foundation. Shetty’s father-in-law assisted him with the financial assistance required for the hospital’s development.
- 2001 - Present
- In 2001, Shetty established the Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) Hospitals in Bommasandra on the outskirts of Bangalore. Narayana Hrudayalaya is a multi-speciality hospital that Shetty established to provide low-cost healthcare to people. NH provides a plethora of services, including cardiac surgery, cardiology, neurosurgery, pediatric surgery, haematology and transplant services, and nephrology. NH is counted as one of the world’s largest heart hospitals, with 1000 beds performing over 30 major surgeries a day.
- After Narayana Hrudayalaya hospital, Shetty founded the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) in Kolkata. He also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Karnataka government to build a 5,000-bed speciality hospital near Bangalore Airport. They also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Gujarat to establish a 5,000-bed hospital in Ahmedabad.
- Shetty has also been a part of a seven-member panel of the Board of governors for a year, which has replaced the Medical Council of India.
Devi Prasad Shetty - Contribution to Health Care
- Devi Prasad Shetty believes that the cost of healthcare could be reduced to 50% in the next 5-10 years if hospitals adopt the idea of an economic scale. According to him, this allows heart surgeries to be completed at a lower cost than in the United States.
- To cut out the extra costs, measures such as buying cheaper scrubs, using cross-ventilation instead of air conditioning, etc. Using these methods, he was able to save a significant amount of money on the surgery. He was able to cut down the cost of coronary bypass surgery by $1,583 and aimed to reduce the price of the surgery to $800 within a decade.
- In several cities in India, Shetty plans to open six more hospitals based on the model of Narayana Hrudayalaya. He wanted to expand to 30,000 beds in hospitals in India, Africa, and other countries in Asia.
- He also contributed to drafting and training patients’ family members to administer after-surgical care.
- In his hospitals, surgeons perform 30-35 surgeries a day, which is only 1-2 surgeries in US hospitals.
- In addition, his hospitals provide substantial free care, especially for poor children, and he performs free surgeries for poor people.
- Shetty is a 75% shareholder of Narayana Hridulaya and has also pioneered low-cost diagnostic services.
- He also designed a low-cost health insurance scheme named Yeshasvini with the government of Karnataka for the poor farmers of the state and it has covered around 40 lakh people.
Devi Prasad Shetty - Media and Fame
- Netflix The Surgeon’s Cut : Shetty is a part of the last episode of Netflix’s docuseries, The Surgeon’s Cut, which follows his treatment of children and babies with low-cost and affordable health care services. The episode was released globally on 9 December 2020, in which he and his team performed more than 30 surgeries a day.
Devi Prasad Shetty : Awards and Honors
- Shetty got the Padma Bhushan award for medicine in 2012.
- Shetty was awarded the Karnataka Ratna award in 2001.
- Shetty was named Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2012 ET Awards.
- He won 2011 The Economist Innovation Awards for the Business process field.
- In 2011, Shetty received an honorary degree from the University of Minnesota.
- In 2014, he received an honorary degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
- He was awarded the Schwab Foundation’s award in 2005.
- Shetty was presented with the Padma Shri award for medicine in 2004.
- Shetty got the Dr. B C Roy award in 2003.
- He was awarded the Sir M. Visvesvaraya Memorial Award in 2003.
- In 2012, Shetty was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year – Life Sciences.
- Shetty got Ernst & Young – Entrepreneur of the Year – Start-up in 2003.
- He was presented with the Rajyotsava award in 2002.
- Titled Indian of the year in the public sector, chosen by CNN-IBN for 2012
Devi Prasad Shetty – Saving Million Lives
A man, who, as a child, dreamt of becoming a surgeon, not only became a surgeon, but also managed to save a million lives. Shetty not only brought excellence to surgery, but also aimed to help everyone he could by bringing the concept of low-cost health care to India.
