Apollo coming back with a vengeance in Noida, Vasant Kunj….

The Rs 14 crore Noida unit which is expected to be opreational by Septemeber is already in the midst of controversy as some medical associations in Noida have objected to its plan to have a five-storey hospital when the other hospitals have to stop at three storeys.

Dr Yogi Mehrotra, managing director of Indraprastha Apollo when asked about the objections, said that they were presumptious as the hospital authorities have only just submitted their hospital expansion plan to the Noida Development Authority and have not received any response yet.

He said that the 100-bedded Apollo Hospital in Noida which will begin functioning in September next year will operate from a building which has been acquired from SABCO group which had originally built it for a hospital five years ago. They could not function there for some reason, he said.

The building situated near Kailash Hospital stands on a 45000 square feet plot and has three storeys at present. It will be a general hospital and will not be as specialised as Indraprastha Apollo, Mehrotra said. He said that more buildings will be added to it.

Doctors in Noida say that the Apollo group has opened a hospital outside Delhi to evade the stricture issued by the Delhi Government to private hospitals to provide 25 per cent of free beds to poor patients. But Mehrotra says that this stricture even in Delhi applies only to those who have taken land on concessional rates.

“In Noida we have bought the land from Sabco and we will abide by the agreement Sabco had with the Noida Development Authority,” he said.

“The Vasant Kunj unit will be a dignostic centre with consultation in a building owned by two businessmen,” Mehrotra said. He said that this unit will come directly under Indraprastha Apollo and not the Appolo group under which all other Apollo hospitals fall. The hospital will have no beds.

He said that it will start operating in January end. “There is no question of any free consultation as it does not belong to us and we are only managing it for others,” he said.

Another Apollo hospital that is nearing completion is the one in Ludhiana and it is to be ready in 18 months. The 300-bedded hospital will be built by SJS Holding who will finance the entire Rs 60 crore project on a five acre plot owned by them. “We will only manage the hospital and not own it,” he said.

He said that Apollo hospitals in Ahmedabad and Sri Lanka would be ready in a year while the one at Bangladesh would take two years.

He said that all these projects had been in the pipeline for the last eight months. He brushed away the adverse attention received by the hospital in the Kumaramangalam case in August this year saying that when we do so much, occasional criticism is to be expected.

The Goverment of India had instituted an inquiry against the hospital in August following charges of negligence on the part of the hospital to diagnose the condition of the late minister R.Kumaramangalam when he was treated in the hospital in April this year.

He died later in August in All India Institute of Medical Sciences of acute myloid leukamia and septicimia.

Apollo Hospital had defended itself saying that they had seen the late minister only for a fortnight and they were not consulted after that.