To the people from Bengal and the North East, Chennai is the place for healthcare. For many from those areas, a selfie outside Sankara Nethralaya is a must even if they don’t have any reason to step into that building. The signs in Graeme’s Road, apart from Tamil and English, are also in Bengali – for that is where Apollo Hospitals is. The city is a mecca for people from practically all over the world when it comes to healthcare. There are studies to indicate that Dubai has cited Chennai as a healthcare model to emulate.
The city did not emerge as a centre of medicine because of the advent of private hospitals. It is a long story, beginning with public healthcare and a band of selfless medicare professionals. The institutional history of the city when it comes to medicine is formidable. A General Hospital that goes back to the 1600s and has been at its present location since the 1770s. An eye hospital that is the second oldest in the modern sense in the whole world. An institute of mental health that has been around for over two centuries. An enviable track record in tuberculosis treatment and in smallpox eradication. A focus on women’s health since the 1880s. The list can go on.
Oft-debated topic
Shifting the GH from its present location seems to have been an oft-debated topic as can be seen from the reports in The Hindu through the 1910s and 1920s. But the campus is still where it was then! What we have had are various attempts at modernisation and that is how it has been kept going. But that it is the first gateway for medical treatment for thousands is undeniable.
What is of interest is the way healthcare grew with the city’s expansion. In the 1960s we read of institutions such as the Sir Ivan Stedeford Hospital begun by the then TI and now Murugappa Group in Ambattur. The Rane Group would sponsor the Margaret Sydney Hospital in the Nanganallur area. All of these were with an eye to keeping medicare affordable to the public.
Undeniable pioneer
The undeniable pioneer in this was of course Dr. K.S. Sanjeevi and his Volunteer Health Service and even earlier, Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy and the Cancer Institute. Add the Perambur Railway Hospital and you have a formidable mix. This was further enriched when we see the arrival of Sankara Nethralaya in the 1970s. On June 6, 1978, The Hindu quotes S.S. Badrinath, of Sankara Nethralaya as stating that a ₹ one crore research centre cum hospital for ophthalmologists would be established in the city and that it would not be for profit. The rest as they say, is history.
Such a wide array of long-serving institutions brought about medical men and women who enriched the medical experience. Several doctors and surgeons stand out as stars, rather like matinee idols. Poonamallee High Road, given its proximity to GH, became a long stretch of private nursing homes thereby enhancing Chennai’s medical record further. And there were specialist institutions as well – Stanley for digit reconstruction, Perambur for the heart, Gosha (Kasturba Gandhi) and the Women and Children’s Hospital for obstetrics to name a few.
When Apollo spearheaded the private medicare revolution in the 1980s, the groundwork was all done. Chennai had to be the place for health. And it has since only grown. There are now countless institutions. And I am sure there will be people who will write in to complain that I have said nothing about the King Institute or the Communicable Diseases Hospital. Chennai’s story in the medical sphere needs a book by itself.
