FUNNY or not funny. As India’s smallest state with the most envied gross income per capita and because of its Portuguese history, Goa does enjoy some of the best healthcare in the country. Yet wealthy patients in trouble with their heart or the big C catching up with them they go seek treatment at Dr Panda’s Asian Hospital and the truly charitable Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, or down south in Bengaluru at Vellore or visionary heart doctor Dr Devi Shetty’s hospital. He’s undoubtedly the biggest name in heart care and especially children’s hearts. Also, possibly the wealthiest doctor in India as also the most concerned and caring to Indian problems and solutions, he’s made heart treatments for children very affordable if it’s not outright charity.
Last week a press conference in Panjim saw a presentation on Narayana Health which has tied up with Daffodils Multi-Speciality Hospital in port town Vasco da Gama down south Goa for OPD services. Speaking to media people there was Dr Sharat Damodar (chairperson-Oncology and senior consultant and head of Adult Haematology & BMP at Narayana Health city, Bengaluru; also Dr Rohit Raghunath Ranades, consultant in gynaecologic oncology.
Both doctors acknowledged that Goa has excellent hospital care but when it comes to complicated heart and cancer cases, sometimes there’s need for the state-of-the-art equipped hospitals like Bengaluru is now with the visionary Dr Devi Shetty’s Narayana Health expansion still going on.
It’s the second-largest if not largest healthcare provider in India today with its wide range super-speciality tertiary care services. Both in complex heart and cancer cases they have it all – be it in oncology, cardiology, orthopedics or transplant services. According to Dr Sharat Damodar with the latest robotic laparoscopic advances today it is possible to arrive at faster healthcare and although the technology is hi fi it is the doctor’s knowledge and skills which operate the technical equipment; they do a lot of high end metabolic surgery.
Also, complex cancer patients may need bone marrow transplants if their immune systems are damaged and this is done with the help of stem cells (it’s almost like giving the patient a new immune system). Narayan Healthcare is a chain of 35 hospitals now across the country and their first OPD for patients in Goa is opening at Daffodils Multi-Speciality Hospital in Vasco Da Gama. If patients can be treated in Goa well and good but if they need to go to Narayana Health City in Bengaluru this will be arranged. They are offering quite a few economy packages for treatment and this is not fleecing the patient as some may imagine!
Dr Devi Shetty’s reputation precedes him and counts for something. They have a dedicated team of something like 18,822 professionals including 3,868 doctors and specialists. They already have OPD connections in several places across the country now and are expanding some more to being the best of patient care, clinical excellence and healthcare innovation.
How many patients do they get in Bengaluru itself? About 22 to 25 at least for hospital admission for high end care vis-à-vis complicated cardiac and bone marrow transplant cases. Immunotherapy is a big subject today and no, Goa is not equipped for these high end procedures which ensure better recovery and outcome.
All this and much more, it was an interesting exchange with the medical folk from Bengaluru in search of patients from Goa. Which come to think of it does mean that better parameters of the good life in Goa also means, ironically – more heart and cancer cases! These two along with diabetes rule the state and as one of the doctors observed, India is today the capital of diabetes which just means lifestyle, lifestyle, we have to change the ways in which we enjoy the good life of plenty, no?
ALL this notwithstanding I am now convinced that we live in extraordinary times living our killer lifestyles. With the number of sick patients growing grossly the world over in urban and rural places and with the quick turnover in climate change and changing ways of here today, gone tomorrow feelings, thoughts, and attitudes in their wake…I’m not surprised the healthcare is now an industry trying to salvage patients with their heart or kidneys or liver in trouble at a younger age (heart patients at 25 years!).
And then there is of course the big C, almost everything degenerates to some cancer or another in body beautiful and the tribe of oncologists, specialists in cancer treatment, multiply to treat cancer in old and not-so-old and now children. You may not call them just cancer doctors now or for that matter heart doctors!
Never before have children grow up like they are doing today – it’s like they’re set up for ill-health sooner or later, despite the dozen plus, plus vaccines shot into them, children with no right to say No, I don’t want to be vaccinated. More and more vaccines are being created to replace the old trustworthy immune system of those born as human beings. We’re living unnatural, artificial, always on the run lifestyles like there’s no tomorrow because we don’t want a tomorrow, a future.
Boom, and life will be soon over for you and me suffering from one disease or another even before it is time to die and to think we could live longer and happier than so many of us are doing today. So the healthcare industry is looming larger than ever before and the race is on to catch us in bud or so to speak – while a disease is at infancy stage in body beautiful, medical technology piles up to make it easier and easier for the doctors. Altogether this is to say that was a very interesting Narayana Health presentation with lots of updates to do with where we are heading today with our rapid turnover of emergencies to do with body beautiful.
On that note it’s avjo, selamat malam, poiteverem, au revoir, arrivedecci, hasta la vista and vachun yeta here for now. The akaash neems are blooming once again down the Campal promenade in capital not-so-smart city Panjim, with both the main heavily encroached road as well as inner roads badly patched up…the Kala Academy is a sorry story, and to think that the 55th International Film Festival is already upon us from November 20 to 28! The one think I’ve looked forward to in all my last 24 years in Goa is catching up with some real films from around the world to beguile mind and body, heart and soul…come IffI, and may the food vendoring for IFFI delegates be more health conscious this season as the country’s filmi duniya descends on Goa. Hang on to your immune systems, my dears if you want to live long and happy. That’s all I can say for now.

—Mme Butterfly