THOMPSON: Indias opulent palaces and monuments have long drawn visitors from around the world. Now, if the nations entrepreneurs can be believed, vast numbers of foreigners will soon trek to this new icon New Delhis Apollo Hospital fast on its way to becoming the Taj Mahal of medical excellence.
At its bustling entrance, the chaos of Indias capital gives way to an oasis of calm and cleanliness. This is where the wealthy come to get healthy. Indias booming private health care system is expected to be worth billions of dollars a year in the decades to come.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: We say at Apollo the patient care is supreme. India is now ready to heal the world.
This is the medical intensive care unit. [Talking to Thompson as they walk into the unit]
THOMPSON: The Apollo Hospital is the jewel in the crown of a growing medical empire created by this man Dr Prathap Reddy.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: [Talking to a nurse] All your patients are okay?
THOMPSON: Today hes meeting and greeting Apollos staff. Its a chance to promote his achievements in front of our camera.
And this is world standard?
DR PRATHAP REDDY: This is the world standard. Thats why, as I said, I being a cardiologist I always say our cardiac care is perhaps the best in the world. Thank you. Im proud of all of you. [Talking to his staff as they exit the unit]
THOMPSON: Its one of twenty three hospitals this medical mogul has set up around India, ready to cater for the 150,000 medical tourists who now visit the country every year.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: And I call this my little India and I want this little India with perfect health care to be translated to other parts. This is how I am progressing, this is my vision, this is my strategy.
THOMPSON: Dr Reddy is also gripped by a vision of huge profits with Apollo Inc becoming the general hospital of the global village. For the rich of Africa and the Middle East and for health care refugees fleeing the high costs of North America, Australia and Britain. Dr Reddy believes that Apollo will become a medical Mecca.
Seven thousand kilometres away in Worcestershire, England, Averill Dollery is preparing to be embraced by Dr Reddys healing hands.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Take that Geranium out. [Talking to her husband whilst gardening]
ROGER DOLLERY: Yeah.
THOMPSON: Averill Dollery is barely able to walk, so excruciating is the pain in her back from a pinched spinal cord. For thirteen years she has been waiting in vain for Britains national health service to fix her up.
AVERILL DOLLERY: I mean Ive been on the books all these years, you know, and no one will do it and it was just well go away and take your tablets.
THOMPSON: Salvation is now here in the shape of the Taj Medical Group. Agents who connect British patients with medical services in India.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: So how are you today?
AVERILL DOLLERY: Not too good.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: No?
AVERILL DOLLERY: No.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: Had a bit of pain.
AVERILL DOLLERY: The knee hurts. When I have to walk awkwardly, it seems to throw the knee out.
THOMPSON: British doctors told Averill and her husband Roger that the spinal surgery she required was too risky because of her weight problem but the chronic pain pushed her to take the Apollo option.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: As soon as you get there and settle in, theyll admit you.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Right.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: And your surgery is probably the next day.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Really?
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: So its as quick as that, to give you enough recovery time and physiotherapy after the operation.
THOMPSON: For the Dollerys, the promise of a cure, courtesy of an Indian hospital, is not without its risks.
ROGER DOLLERY: The only thing that I am worried about is that when we get over there, the further tests, the MRIs that theyre going to do before the operation will turn around and say we cant do it.
T-shirts aplenty, night shirts. [Packing Averills bag ready for trip to India]
THOMPSON: But the operation in India will cost just on third of what a private hospital would charge in Britain.
AVERILL DOLLERY: We have everything in place now, the tickets came this morning and its Delhi here we come.
THOMPSON: Three days later, Averills odyssey begins. Shes given priority treatment through customs and gets chauffeured through the night to her hospital. As a medical tourist who has never been to India before, Averill enters a bubble of privilege.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Its beautiful. [Talking about hospital room as she is wheeled in wheelchair]
THOMPSON: Sealed off from the reality of New Delhis heat and poverty.
DOCTOR: [Examining Averill] If you have any pain, you let me know.
THOMPSON: Extensive tests will soon decide whether Apollos doctors are prepared to perform an operation their colleagues in Britain wouldnt to fuse Averills spine and end her years of agony. It soon becomes apparent just how important this trip is for the Dollerys.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Im just hoping that my back hasnt got so bad that they cant do it.
THOMPSON: Behind the guarded optimism, Averill and Roger are considering the darkest of alternatives if the Indian surgeons refuse to operate.
ROGER DOLLERY: Quality of life has got so absolutely poor that Averill and I were talking earlier this year and she said well come what may Im not going to see Christmas.
AVERILL DOLLERY: [Talking to nurse who is taking her blood pressure] Sorry?
NURSE: Its one thirty, eighty.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Is that bad?
NURSE: Its not bad.
THOMPSON: When you say Averill may not see Christmas, are you suggesting that she might be forced to take her own life?
ROGER DOLLERY: She may feel that strongly, yeah and Ill help her, no qualms.
THOMPSON: Life or death desperation is a daily reality for many millions of impoverished Indians. Just across town from Apollo is Lok Nayak Delhis biggest and busiest public hospital. Here people queue all day just for a basic blood test. The sick and exhausted can wait days to see a doctor and when they finally do, the appointment is over in seconds. Sitting around a single table, these four doctors process up to one hundred patients every hour.
DOCTOR: If you want me to see you, please get in the queue. Youve pushed in, but we have to see everybody. How will we do that?
THOMPSON: Perhaps nowhere else is the growing gulf between the worlds rich and poor as stark as in Indias health system. On the one side theres a burgeoning private sector, servicing Indias elites and an increasingly lucrative international clientele. On the other there is this at least 800 million of Indias other people, clamouring for attention in a chaotic public health system which is rupturing at the seams.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: What is happening is an apology for healthcare. People seeing patients in thirty seconds flat, dolling out some medicines without any systematic follow-up etc.
THOMPSON: Dr Amit Sen Gupta once worked in a public hospital. He now lobbies for change as a leader of Indias peoples health movement.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: The hospitals in the cities are about the best that you see so you can imagine what youd see in the smaller cities and the villages where actually primary healthcare centres go without doctors for months together. So its really a situation where things are falling apart and there has been the last 15 years a virtual dismantling of the public healthcare system in the country.
THOMPSON: India has the worlds second fastest growing economy but since liberalisation began 15 years ago, government spending on public health has been slashed to less than 1 percent of GDP.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: Given the choice, I dont think anybody, Indian or foreigner would go to a system like that. Its a situation that for most people is extremely distressing, especially in a situation where people are going there when theyre sick and in need for care.
THOMPSON: Ram Swarup has spent six and a half years, his sons whole life, trying to get young Inderjits stomach repaired.
RAM SWARUP: His poo canal comes from his stomach. I do not have money and cannot get him proper treatment.
THOMPSON: After four failed operations, Inderjits intestine still excretes from his belly.
RAM SWARUP: I cannot keep jobs because I spend all my time looking after him. I get work but cannot keep it because of my child and no one wants to help.
THOMPSON: Todays visit to Lok Nayak brings no relief the queues are too long.
RAM SWARUP: I want the doctors trust, I want my childs life back. I want to bring him up myself. If only hell get well. He cries to go to school . . . he cries for an education. He isnt suffering from any disease, he just needs an operation.
THOMPSON: On the rare occasions Ram Swarup gets through to a doctor, the response is predictable.
RAM SWARUP: Then the doctor examines the child and asks us to go away and come back in ten days or a month. We go back and he sends us away again. My childs not getting proper treatment.
THOMPSON: Operations in public hospitals can be brief and perfunctory affairs. In this surgery, a single doctor operates on 25 people in a three hour shift and anaesthetics can be hit and miss.
NURSE: Because we have lots of patients, doctors are few. They have to do a lot of hard work, they have to see so many patients, they have to give treatment or surgery to a number of patients.
DOCTOR: This is L4, L5 and there is severe constriction here. [Looking at Averills back x-ray]
THOMPSON: Back across town at Apollo, Averill continues to enjoy round-the-clock care.
DOCTOR: If you come down, its totally blocked.
THOMPSON: And receives some good news. Her spine operation, though deemed dangerous, is going ahead.
DOCTOR: Everybody agreed that if we decompress this level, you should be able to do well and your leg pain and back pain should go away. I hope your long wait is now over.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Yes, it has been a long time 10 years.
Im really so grateful to them that they are going to do it because nobody in England is prepared to do it. Its very good.
THOMPSON: So Indias come to your rescue?
AVERILL DOLLERY: They certainly have.
THOMPSON: The complex procedure lasts almost three hours and its a success.
DOCTOR: How are you feeling this morning?
AVERILL DOLLERY: Very painful.
DOCTOR: Where?
AVERILL DOLLERY: The site of the wound I suppose.
DOCTOR: All right.
THOMPSON: Averill is on her way to being cured. Its a great outcome for Averill and Roger. As far as theyre concerned, its money well spent and a kind of indirect foreign aid.
ROGER DOLLERY: India is selling medical services at the moment. Im a customer for medical services so indirectly in a very small way, hopefully Im helping to provide medical services for the rest of the population.
THOMPSON: But is this really true? India is home to 40 percent of the worlds poor and yet has one of the worlds most privatised health systems. A system simply beyond the reach of most Indians.
And its Indias confusion between the notions of public and private healthcare that has thrown a dark shadow over the otherwise compelling success story of Apollo. For rents of just three cents a year and other generous government subsidies, Dr Reddys hospital is supposed to surrender 30 percent of its beds absolutely free to Indias poor.
Whether thats happening or not has been a subject of intense public debate. While we film at Apollo, the hospitals American Managing Director, Anne Marie Moncure, makes a startling revelation. Before a visiting delegation of Danish medical professionals, she admits that the administration of the hospitals service for the poor is openly abused.
ANNE MARIE MONCURE: I would be dishonest and deceiving if I didnt say that politics sometimes enters the equation. So sometimes you have patients in the governments sponsored side that drive up in their Mercedes. I like to believe and if you walk through the unit that the majority of the patients there truly are there because of need based, because it is a general ward set-up.
THOMPSON: Its an admission that comes as no surprise to Justice Abdul Sattar Qureshi. He led a recent government enquiry into Delhis private hospitals, including Apollo.
JUSTICE ABDUL SATTAR QURESHI: From the records that I found, the people who were admitted in those beds which were meant to be for free treatment to the poor, most of them appear to be the friends, relatives and other persons recommended by the politicians and the highly placed bureaucrats.
THOMPSON: Justice Qureshi says that Delhis private hospitals are driven by greed and self-interest.
JUSTICE ABDUL SATTAR QURESHI: Their attention was totally focussed on treating the rich patients. They virtually ignored their social duty and the contractual duty to render free service to the poor with the result that some of these hospitals are so expensive that the poor people cannot go anywhere near those hospitals.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: I am not a hospital who is treating diarrhoea and dysentery. This hospital is meant for advanced care. Where I have to buy 55 percent of the heart surgery materials I have to purchase, with whose money do I buy? I have to buy with other patients money. I am not justified in charging patients there for a poor persons treatment. I can give hospital facilities free. I am also giving food free, and I am giving all the diagnostic facilities free. I am giving all my theatres free, ICC is free, everything is free. But they have to pay for what I have to buy. I cannot buy out of another patients money.
THOMPSON: So in that sense you cant actually offer the poor fully free services?
DR PRATHAP REDDY: The government should pay for it.
THOMPSON: Dr Reddy invites us to view the special ward for the poor at his hospital.
STAFF MEMBER: Patients are not ready so we cannot show anything.
THOMPSON: His staff prove to be less enthusiastic. Banned from filming the ward, we use a concealed camera.
[Talking to Senior Staff Member] When we spoke to Dr Prathap Reddy, hes the boss, he said we could film in the free ward and we just want to . . .
SENIOR STAFF MEMBER: Normally we dont do that, because its a very sensitive subject. The free ward is run by the Delhi government theyre partners here.
THOMPSON: Right.
SENIOR STAFF MEMBER: And that can get nasty and dicey.
THOMPSON: Just why the hospital is so sensitive about the poor ward becomes only too apparent.
[Talking to doctor in ward] Theres a lot of empty beds.
In the central ward, one patient and eleven empty beds.
[Taking to doctor in ward] But its mostly empty.
DOCTOR: Yeah.
THOMPSON: The hospital Public Relations Officer is at pains to point out that its not Apollos fault.
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER: Its not that you can just walk into the hospital and say you are poor, and you are entitled you to a free bed. You have to get a letter from the Delhi Government.
THOMPSON: From the Delhi government?
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER: The Delhi government, yes.
THOMPSON: Not from another hospital just saying . . .
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER: No, no, no. This is facilitated by the Delhi Government and the Delhi government would have the final say.
THOMPSON: But is it a problem, do you think, theres a lot of empty beds and a lot of people who need them.
DOCTOR: Certainly if they come we will take care. We dont have to put any bias to that.
THOMPSON: But they have to be able to read, get the right documents . . .
DOCTOR: Yeah.
THOMPSON: . . . give them to a Delhi Government, get permission from the Delhi Government and only then they will get free beds at this hospital.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: I have created that facility. If they are not using it, I am not at fault. But you know the media makes big out of nothing.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: Very few people are likely to know that you can, I mean if youre poor and you cant pay, you can actually go to Apollo to get treated.
THOMPSON: Why?
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: Thats because the Delhi Government has not sort of made this public, has not made an effort to really pick up deserving candidates of those who should get treated at Apollo.
THOMPSON: Some of those using the beds are neither poor nor Indian.
You came from Nigeria to here to get medical treatment?
NIGERIAN MAN: Yes I have kidney failure.
THOMPSON: Kidney failure. You paid to come to get treatment here?
NIGERIAN MAN: Yes, I used my money to pay. The first time I came I spent $US25,000 to change the kidney.
THOMPSON: If he appears to be one of the lucky ones, its not quite the case. The kidney transplant has failed.
NIGERIAN MAN: They asked me to come back for a check-up after three months. Now I came back for a check-up and the kidney fails again. The kidneys still not working now so now Im seeing dialysis.
THOMPSON: Not all of Indias medical tourists, it seems, are happy customers.
NIGERIAN MAN: They asked me to pay some money now but I have no money to pay, because they asked me to pay almost $15,000 but I have no money to pay.
THOMPSON: Dr Reddy stands by Apollos record.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: Today we have done 55,000 open-heart surgeries and last year my success rate was 99.6 percent. Theres only one hospital in the world which did better than this.
THOMPSON: Averill is coming to the end of her stay in India. Its two weeks after her operation and shes preparing to take her first steps. Her spinal surgery was a success, along with the knee replacement operation that Apollos doctors decided she needed as well. For these medical tourists at least, its been the trip of a lifetime.
ROGER DOLLERY: India saved Averills life. Thank you is not enough I mean what can you say? You cant say anything except you saved our life.
THOMPSON: The Dollerys odyssey is over. After just 16 days, they are preparing to leave India.
For Ram Swarup and his son, Apollos medical marvels are nothing but a fantasy.
RAM SWARUP: I cant afford it. I could try, but I dont have that money. A lot of money is required to go to Apollo and I dont have anybody to help me financially. Well known hospitals dont help the poor.
THOMPSON: The endless visits to the public hospitals and the interminable waiting looks set to continue. India may be ready to heal the world, but the majority of its own people remain at the back of the queue.
At its bustling entrance, the chaos of Indias capital gives way to an oasis of calm and cleanliness. This is where the wealthy come to get healthy. Indias booming private health care system is expected to be worth billions of dollars a year in the decades to come.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: We say at Apollo the patient care is supreme. India is now ready to heal the world.
This is the medical intensive care unit. [Talking to Thompson as they walk into the unit]
THOMPSON: The Apollo Hospital is the jewel in the crown of a growing medical empire created by this man Dr Prathap Reddy.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: [Talking to a nurse] All your patients are okay?
THOMPSON: Today hes meeting and greeting Apollos staff. Its a chance to promote his achievements in front of our camera.
And this is world standard?
DR PRATHAP REDDY: This is the world standard. Thats why, as I said, I being a cardiologist I always say our cardiac care is perhaps the best in the world. Thank you. Im proud of all of you. [Talking to his staff as they exit the unit]
THOMPSON: Its one of twenty three hospitals this medical mogul has set up around India, ready to cater for the 150,000 medical tourists who now visit the country every year.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: And I call this my little India and I want this little India with perfect health care to be translated to other parts. This is how I am progressing, this is my vision, this is my strategy.
THOMPSON: Dr Reddy is also gripped by a vision of huge profits with Apollo Inc becoming the general hospital of the global village. For the rich of Africa and the Middle East and for health care refugees fleeing the high costs of North America, Australia and Britain. Dr Reddy believes that Apollo will become a medical Mecca.
Seven thousand kilometres away in Worcestershire, England, Averill Dollery is preparing to be embraced by Dr Reddys healing hands.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Take that Geranium out. [Talking to her husband whilst gardening]
ROGER DOLLERY: Yeah.
THOMPSON: Averill Dollery is barely able to walk, so excruciating is the pain in her back from a pinched spinal cord. For thirteen years she has been waiting in vain for Britains national health service to fix her up.
AVERILL DOLLERY: I mean Ive been on the books all these years, you know, and no one will do it and it was just well go away and take your tablets.
THOMPSON: Salvation is now here in the shape of the Taj Medical Group. Agents who connect British patients with medical services in India.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: So how are you today?
AVERILL DOLLERY: Not too good.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: No?
AVERILL DOLLERY: No.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: Had a bit of pain.
AVERILL DOLLERY: The knee hurts. When I have to walk awkwardly, it seems to throw the knee out.
THOMPSON: British doctors told Averill and her husband Roger that the spinal surgery she required was too risky because of her weight problem but the chronic pain pushed her to take the Apollo option.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: As soon as you get there and settle in, theyll admit you.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Right.
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: And your surgery is probably the next day.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Really?
TAJ MEDICAL GROUP AGENT: So its as quick as that, to give you enough recovery time and physiotherapy after the operation.
THOMPSON: For the Dollerys, the promise of a cure, courtesy of an Indian hospital, is not without its risks.
ROGER DOLLERY: The only thing that I am worried about is that when we get over there, the further tests, the MRIs that theyre going to do before the operation will turn around and say we cant do it.
T-shirts aplenty, night shirts. [Packing Averills bag ready for trip to India]
THOMPSON: But the operation in India will cost just on third of what a private hospital would charge in Britain.
AVERILL DOLLERY: We have everything in place now, the tickets came this morning and its Delhi here we come.
THOMPSON: Three days later, Averills odyssey begins. Shes given priority treatment through customs and gets chauffeured through the night to her hospital. As a medical tourist who has never been to India before, Averill enters a bubble of privilege.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Its beautiful. [Talking about hospital room as she is wheeled in wheelchair]
THOMPSON: Sealed off from the reality of New Delhis heat and poverty.
DOCTOR: [Examining Averill] If you have any pain, you let me know.
THOMPSON: Extensive tests will soon decide whether Apollos doctors are prepared to perform an operation their colleagues in Britain wouldnt to fuse Averills spine and end her years of agony. It soon becomes apparent just how important this trip is for the Dollerys.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Im just hoping that my back hasnt got so bad that they cant do it.
THOMPSON: Behind the guarded optimism, Averill and Roger are considering the darkest of alternatives if the Indian surgeons refuse to operate.
ROGER DOLLERY: Quality of life has got so absolutely poor that Averill and I were talking earlier this year and she said well come what may Im not going to see Christmas.
AVERILL DOLLERY: [Talking to nurse who is taking her blood pressure] Sorry?
NURSE: Its one thirty, eighty.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Is that bad?
NURSE: Its not bad.
THOMPSON: When you say Averill may not see Christmas, are you suggesting that she might be forced to take her own life?
ROGER DOLLERY: She may feel that strongly, yeah and Ill help her, no qualms.
THOMPSON: Life or death desperation is a daily reality for many millions of impoverished Indians. Just across town from Apollo is Lok Nayak Delhis biggest and busiest public hospital. Here people queue all day just for a basic blood test. The sick and exhausted can wait days to see a doctor and when they finally do, the appointment is over in seconds. Sitting around a single table, these four doctors process up to one hundred patients every hour.
DOCTOR: If you want me to see you, please get in the queue. Youve pushed in, but we have to see everybody. How will we do that?
THOMPSON: Perhaps nowhere else is the growing gulf between the worlds rich and poor as stark as in Indias health system. On the one side theres a burgeoning private sector, servicing Indias elites and an increasingly lucrative international clientele. On the other there is this at least 800 million of Indias other people, clamouring for attention in a chaotic public health system which is rupturing at the seams.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: What is happening is an apology for healthcare. People seeing patients in thirty seconds flat, dolling out some medicines without any systematic follow-up etc.
THOMPSON: Dr Amit Sen Gupta once worked in a public hospital. He now lobbies for change as a leader of Indias peoples health movement.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: The hospitals in the cities are about the best that you see so you can imagine what youd see in the smaller cities and the villages where actually primary healthcare centres go without doctors for months together. So its really a situation where things are falling apart and there has been the last 15 years a virtual dismantling of the public healthcare system in the country.
THOMPSON: India has the worlds second fastest growing economy but since liberalisation began 15 years ago, government spending on public health has been slashed to less than 1 percent of GDP.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: Given the choice, I dont think anybody, Indian or foreigner would go to a system like that. Its a situation that for most people is extremely distressing, especially in a situation where people are going there when theyre sick and in need for care.
THOMPSON: Ram Swarup has spent six and a half years, his sons whole life, trying to get young Inderjits stomach repaired.
RAM SWARUP: His poo canal comes from his stomach. I do not have money and cannot get him proper treatment.
THOMPSON: After four failed operations, Inderjits intestine still excretes from his belly.
RAM SWARUP: I cannot keep jobs because I spend all my time looking after him. I get work but cannot keep it because of my child and no one wants to help.
THOMPSON: Todays visit to Lok Nayak brings no relief the queues are too long.
RAM SWARUP: I want the doctors trust, I want my childs life back. I want to bring him up myself. If only hell get well. He cries to go to school . . . he cries for an education. He isnt suffering from any disease, he just needs an operation.
THOMPSON: On the rare occasions Ram Swarup gets through to a doctor, the response is predictable.
RAM SWARUP: Then the doctor examines the child and asks us to go away and come back in ten days or a month. We go back and he sends us away again. My childs not getting proper treatment.
THOMPSON: Operations in public hospitals can be brief and perfunctory affairs. In this surgery, a single doctor operates on 25 people in a three hour shift and anaesthetics can be hit and miss.
NURSE: Because we have lots of patients, doctors are few. They have to do a lot of hard work, they have to see so many patients, they have to give treatment or surgery to a number of patients.
DOCTOR: This is L4, L5 and there is severe constriction here. [Looking at Averills back x-ray]
THOMPSON: Back across town at Apollo, Averill continues to enjoy round-the-clock care.
DOCTOR: If you come down, its totally blocked.
THOMPSON: And receives some good news. Her spine operation, though deemed dangerous, is going ahead.
DOCTOR: Everybody agreed that if we decompress this level, you should be able to do well and your leg pain and back pain should go away. I hope your long wait is now over.
AVERILL DOLLERY: Yes, it has been a long time 10 years.
Im really so grateful to them that they are going to do it because nobody in England is prepared to do it. Its very good.
THOMPSON: So Indias come to your rescue?
AVERILL DOLLERY: They certainly have.
THOMPSON: The complex procedure lasts almost three hours and its a success.
DOCTOR: How are you feeling this morning?
AVERILL DOLLERY: Very painful.
DOCTOR: Where?
AVERILL DOLLERY: The site of the wound I suppose.
DOCTOR: All right.
THOMPSON: Averill is on her way to being cured. Its a great outcome for Averill and Roger. As far as theyre concerned, its money well spent and a kind of indirect foreign aid.
ROGER DOLLERY: India is selling medical services at the moment. Im a customer for medical services so indirectly in a very small way, hopefully Im helping to provide medical services for the rest of the population.
THOMPSON: But is this really true? India is home to 40 percent of the worlds poor and yet has one of the worlds most privatised health systems. A system simply beyond the reach of most Indians.
And its Indias confusion between the notions of public and private healthcare that has thrown a dark shadow over the otherwise compelling success story of Apollo. For rents of just three cents a year and other generous government subsidies, Dr Reddys hospital is supposed to surrender 30 percent of its beds absolutely free to Indias poor.
Whether thats happening or not has been a subject of intense public debate. While we film at Apollo, the hospitals American Managing Director, Anne Marie Moncure, makes a startling revelation. Before a visiting delegation of Danish medical professionals, she admits that the administration of the hospitals service for the poor is openly abused.
ANNE MARIE MONCURE: I would be dishonest and deceiving if I didnt say that politics sometimes enters the equation. So sometimes you have patients in the governments sponsored side that drive up in their Mercedes. I like to believe and if you walk through the unit that the majority of the patients there truly are there because of need based, because it is a general ward set-up.
THOMPSON: Its an admission that comes as no surprise to Justice Abdul Sattar Qureshi. He led a recent government enquiry into Delhis private hospitals, including Apollo.
JUSTICE ABDUL SATTAR QURESHI: From the records that I found, the people who were admitted in those beds which were meant to be for free treatment to the poor, most of them appear to be the friends, relatives and other persons recommended by the politicians and the highly placed bureaucrats.
THOMPSON: Justice Qureshi says that Delhis private hospitals are driven by greed and self-interest.
JUSTICE ABDUL SATTAR QURESHI: Their attention was totally focussed on treating the rich patients. They virtually ignored their social duty and the contractual duty to render free service to the poor with the result that some of these hospitals are so expensive that the poor people cannot go anywhere near those hospitals.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: I am not a hospital who is treating diarrhoea and dysentery. This hospital is meant for advanced care. Where I have to buy 55 percent of the heart surgery materials I have to purchase, with whose money do I buy? I have to buy with other patients money. I am not justified in charging patients there for a poor persons treatment. I can give hospital facilities free. I am also giving food free, and I am giving all the diagnostic facilities free. I am giving all my theatres free, ICC is free, everything is free. But they have to pay for what I have to buy. I cannot buy out of another patients money.
THOMPSON: So in that sense you cant actually offer the poor fully free services?
DR PRATHAP REDDY: The government should pay for it.
THOMPSON: Dr Reddy invites us to view the special ward for the poor at his hospital.
STAFF MEMBER: Patients are not ready so we cannot show anything.
THOMPSON: His staff prove to be less enthusiastic. Banned from filming the ward, we use a concealed camera.
[Talking to Senior Staff Member] When we spoke to Dr Prathap Reddy, hes the boss, he said we could film in the free ward and we just want to . . .
SENIOR STAFF MEMBER: Normally we dont do that, because its a very sensitive subject. The free ward is run by the Delhi government theyre partners here.
THOMPSON: Right.
SENIOR STAFF MEMBER: And that can get nasty and dicey.
THOMPSON: Just why the hospital is so sensitive about the poor ward becomes only too apparent.
[Talking to doctor in ward] Theres a lot of empty beds.
In the central ward, one patient and eleven empty beds.
[Taking to doctor in ward] But its mostly empty.
DOCTOR: Yeah.
THOMPSON: The hospital Public Relations Officer is at pains to point out that its not Apollos fault.
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER: Its not that you can just walk into the hospital and say you are poor, and you are entitled you to a free bed. You have to get a letter from the Delhi Government.
THOMPSON: From the Delhi government?
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER: The Delhi government, yes.
THOMPSON: Not from another hospital just saying . . .
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER: No, no, no. This is facilitated by the Delhi Government and the Delhi government would have the final say.
THOMPSON: But is it a problem, do you think, theres a lot of empty beds and a lot of people who need them.
DOCTOR: Certainly if they come we will take care. We dont have to put any bias to that.
THOMPSON: But they have to be able to read, get the right documents . . .
DOCTOR: Yeah.
THOMPSON: . . . give them to a Delhi Government, get permission from the Delhi Government and only then they will get free beds at this hospital.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: I have created that facility. If they are not using it, I am not at fault. But you know the media makes big out of nothing.
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: Very few people are likely to know that you can, I mean if youre poor and you cant pay, you can actually go to Apollo to get treated.
THOMPSON: Why?
DR AMIT SEN GUPTA: Thats because the Delhi Government has not sort of made this public, has not made an effort to really pick up deserving candidates of those who should get treated at Apollo.
THOMPSON: Some of those using the beds are neither poor nor Indian.
You came from Nigeria to here to get medical treatment?
NIGERIAN MAN: Yes I have kidney failure.
THOMPSON: Kidney failure. You paid to come to get treatment here?
NIGERIAN MAN: Yes, I used my money to pay. The first time I came I spent $US25,000 to change the kidney.
THOMPSON: If he appears to be one of the lucky ones, its not quite the case. The kidney transplant has failed.
NIGERIAN MAN: They asked me to come back for a check-up after three months. Now I came back for a check-up and the kidney fails again. The kidneys still not working now so now Im seeing dialysis.
THOMPSON: Not all of Indias medical tourists, it seems, are happy customers.
NIGERIAN MAN: They asked me to pay some money now but I have no money to pay, because they asked me to pay almost $15,000 but I have no money to pay.
THOMPSON: Dr Reddy stands by Apollos record.
DR PRATHAP REDDY: Today we have done 55,000 open-heart surgeries and last year my success rate was 99.6 percent. Theres only one hospital in the world which did better than this.
THOMPSON: Averill is coming to the end of her stay in India. Its two weeks after her operation and shes preparing to take her first steps. Her spinal surgery was a success, along with the knee replacement operation that Apollos doctors decided she needed as well. For these medical tourists at least, its been the trip of a lifetime.
ROGER DOLLERY: India saved Averills life. Thank you is not enough I mean what can you say? You cant say anything except you saved our life.
THOMPSON: The Dollerys odyssey is over. After just 16 days, they are preparing to leave India.
For Ram Swarup and his son, Apollos medical marvels are nothing but a fantasy.
RAM SWARUP: I cant afford it. I could try, but I dont have that money. A lot of money is required to go to Apollo and I dont have anybody to help me financially. Well known hospitals dont help the poor.
THOMPSON: The endless visits to the public hospitals and the interminable waiting looks set to continue. India may be ready to heal the world, but the majority of its own people remain at the back of the queue.