Parkway healthcare Singapore to have Joint ventures in India

Panaji, Feb 15 (UNI) Parkway Healthcare Group of hospitals in Singapore plans to have more joint ventures with Indian hospitals for promoting state-of-the-art medicare.

The group was also keen to promote ''telemedicine'' through these joint ventures apart from its corporate offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Punjab which are engaged in promoting medical tourism to Singapore.

''Singapore is a hub of medical tourism with state-of-the-art liver and kidney transplant surgeries being performed over the years at expenses far below the developed countries like the US and UK,'' says Dr K C Tan Kai Chah, a renowned surgeon who had performed more than 600 liver transplants during his career.

Talkin to reporters here today, Dr Tan said the Parkway group of hospitals conducts 30 liver transplants on an average every year and six of the patients were from India and five from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

''The success rate is 85 to 95 per cent and each transplant costs about Rs 70 lakhs. For younger patients, it could be lower depending on the package,'' he said adding at present, three Indians, nominated by the Indian Association of Surgical Gastroenterologists had been trained under him.

Singapore government allows transplant surgeries with organs provided by both the ''related and unrelated donors''. The unrelated donors could be ''emotionally related'' also as in the case of a film actress whose lover donated a part of his liver to save her from the jaws of death recently.

UNI