CHITTOOR: Apollo Hospitals chairman Pratap C. Reddy on Monday said the social service division of the hospitals would gradually intensify the campaign against cancer, covering all parts of India, and to cover the poor and downtrodden sections through various health schemes.
The Apollo chairman was here supervising the functioning of the Total Health programme launched in October 2013 in Tavanampalle mandal near Chittoor. Dr. Pratap Reddy, during the two-day review and supervision programme, interacted with patients from all over the mandal, covering about 30 habitations. The two-day Cancer Screening Test covered about 200 patients.
Speaking to the media at the Apollo Medical College here, Dr. Reddy said during the last three years, over 30,000 patients of the mandal had been screened for various health risks, including cancer. He said awareness on cancer was the need of the hour in rural areas. “Thinking that this life threatening disease requires huge money for treatment, most of the victims from rural areas are neglecting their health. Our social service unit teams would focus on sensitising the rural masses and also the urban poor to come forward to attend free screening tests whenever they are organised by various health groups and voluntary agencies. Early detection of cancer would pave way for complete treatment,” he said.
Dr. Reddy said the integrated family health screening modules introduced by the Apollo Hospitals, covering the entire population of the select villages, was first of its kind in the world.
Marking the three-year completion of the Apollo’s Total Health scheme, the priests from the Golden Temple of Vellore (TN) conducted special pujas and presented the temple prasadam to Dr. Pratap Reddy and his daughter Dr. Sangeetha Reddy at the medical college here. Temple’s information officer Kalyan said the Apollo chief and his family members would attend the Srinivasa Kalyanam scheduled at the Golden Temple in March.
