Apollo to set up super speciality hospital in Kuala Lumpur

Friday, 19 September 2003, 19:30 IST
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CHENNAI: India's leading hospital chain Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd has bagged a $160 million order from Malaysia's national petroleum company Petronas to build and maintain a super speciality hospital in Kuala Lumpur. "The 310-bed hospital is to be made operational in 18 months," Apollo chairman Prathap C. Reddy told a news conference held here on the group's 20th anniversary. "We had bid for this project along with the who's who of healthcare and we won it," he said. Managing in excess of 6,200 beds in India and overseas, Apollo is currently the world's third largest private healthcare provider. Apollo is targeting to reach the second slot in the next five years in terms of beds under management, outstripping U.S.-based Tenet Healthcare, which has 19,000 beds under its management. "It is an achievable target, we might well surpass it," said Reddy. Apollo's aggressive expansion plans envisage making further inroads in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it operates a hospital in Dubai. Having received in principle approval from the Abu Dhabi government to upgrade medical facilities in the emirate, Reddy said a joint venture would be set up soon for implementing the project. "They want us to improve and upgrade medical facilities in the hospitals there. We will form a joint venture that will work towards this," he said. The group currently manages 37 hospitals and 46 clinics and is planning another 250 clinics across India in the next two years. In its 20 years of operations, Apollo has chalked up several new trends in the country, from setting up the first corporate hospital in 1983 to the introduction of telemedicine and rural healthcare through an insurance scheme. It has been striving to promote India as a preferred healthcare destination, offering complex surgeries at a fraction of the cost in the U.S.
Source: IANS
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