"The ultimate joy

... is not in having what you want in life, but seeing people around you also having what they want."

I LEARNT FROM MOTHER TERESA
THAT LOVE IS MORE POWERFUL
THAN ANY LETHAL WEAPON.

Dr Devi Prasad Shetty's passion is all about making health care available to all, especially children. Dr Reddy pioneered two concepts that he feels are the way forward in reducing health care costs. In 2001 he started a telemedicine project that has since helped treat some 53,000 rural patients. Two years later, he conceptualized the Yeshasvini Health Scheme with the Karnataka Milk federation, providing health insurance to some 17 lakh farmers at an annual cost of just Rs60 per person. The insured farmers are offered everything from consultation to major surgery.

Dr Shetty's group now does 12 percent of all heart surgeries in India, and he's known for smartly using these numbers to haggle down the cost of medical equipment - so that patients pay less.

Says Dr Shetty, "It may sound like a boast... but this is one profession where we are real-life heroes. A young lady comes to me with a baby who is blue, gasping for breath. We operate and five hours later the mother sees the baby in the ICU and she is so happy and says - My baby, he is now so pink!... A baby brings lots of joy to a family. The moment he starts turning blue, the joy becomes a nightmare. And they may have finacial problems. They come here and we tell them that if they have no money, we can organize it and they can't believe these things are possible. We are heroes not once or twice a month, but ten to twenty times a day. Who wants to exchange that position for anything else?"

- Excerpted  from an article by Sushan Shetty published in the February 2010 issue of the Reader's Digest. Readers will find going through the full interview of Dr Shetty worth their while - CitizenSBI Blog.