Mercifully not all sectors are affected by the economic slow down. Education, healthcare and the food sectors belong to this category. With the substantial increase in life expectancy, thanks to better hygiene and health care, consciousness for better health has been expanding. Through the years investment in health care has been registering handsome increases. The Indian healthcare market is estimated at around Rs 200,000 crore .

The healthcare sector covers the providers of healthcare at the primary level consisting of facilities for preventive care and basic diagnostic care; secondary care with diagnostic centres equipped with advanced facilities like CT scan and tertiary care.

Tamil Nadu had a good infrastructure for healthcare even at the time of independence. With the advent of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise in the early 1980s and the opening up of medical education for the private sector, the state has been witnessing spectacular growth in medical education, research and treatment. With several super speciality hospitals manned by renowned specialists, the state is fast emerging a healthcare hub, not just for drawing patients from other parts of the country but also from several countries, especially from the Gulf and Africa. Just look at 35 per cent of the patients at Sankara Nethralaya drawn from distant West Bengal and other eastern states! Several super speciality hospitals in Chennai like MIOT treat around a sixth of their patients coming from abroad.

In this issue we are focusing on Chennai emerging the healthcare hub of India. We are presenting reports on three of the major hospitals in Chennai that also focus on medical research. These include an exciting new concept of a medi village established as the first special economic zone in India in the healthcare sector.

Tamil Nadu scores high in a variety of indices related to human health.There has also been a handsome growth in the number of medical colleges (30) with an annual intake of 3565 seats forming nearly 11 per cent of all India. However, one notices a skewed distribution: the southern states and Maharashtra account for around 60 per cent of the number of medical colleges in India and 62 per cent of the seats. The larger states of Bihar, MP, Rajasthan and UP account for just 18 per cent of the number of colleges and 17 per cent of the seats. Sadly the large state of Bihar offers only 610 seats against the tiny Puduchery (1000).

Such a skewed distribution is also witnessed within Tamil Nadu. Chennai, for instance, accounts for a heavy concentration of medical universities, colleges and hospitals. Coimbatore, Madurai, Erode, Salem, Tiruchi and Udagamandalam do have good healthcare infrastructure. The state has been expanding such infrastructure in few other districts; but there is need for a more even distribution among districts that lack healthcare infrastructure.

In our survey, we noticed a welcome stress on prevention. The incidence of hyper tension and other heart diseases, diabetes, cancer and kidney-related diseases have been on the increase. Several eminent doctors we interviewed emphasized the need for regular checkup that will facilitate early diagnosis and modest cost for treatment and correction. This is particularly important for diabetes and kidney-related diseases. Specialists, assured that these can be diagnosed with simple tests at modest cost and timely correction, would eliminate the need for expensive, prolonged treatment that would involve invasive surgeries. There is welcome effort to expand awareness through education. Tamil Nadu will spend close to Rs. 2000 crore this year on medical and public health; a good portion of this should be directed for expanding awareness for regular checkup and early diagnosis.

We noticed a welcome feature related to medical research, a field that did not receive much attention in the earlier six decades. Sri Ramachandra University alone has stepped up the budget for medical research from around Rs 4 crore to around Rs.25 crore in just two years! We found such sharp focus on research in other leading institutions like Frontier Lifeline and Sankara Nethralaya. With the modest cost of researchers, available in large numbers, combined with the handsome step up in funding, there can be great benefits flowing out of advanced medical research.