Apollo Hospitals to expand operations in African countries

Hospital group and Tanzanian govt earlier signed agreement to set up a hospital with around 250-300 beds

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

As part of expanding overseas projects, Apollo Hospitals is planning to start its clinic Tanzania in another three to four months. The company is also planning to sign a similar Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Zimbabwe government, said Pratap C Reddy, chairman of Apollo Hospitals Group.

Speaking in the sidelines of inauguration of Apollo Cancer Conclave 2014, an international forum organised to work every type of cancer curable, he said, that the super speciality clinic in Tanzania would be ready in three to four months. The clinic would be costing around $9 million, he added.

It may be noted that the hospital group and Tanzanian government officials has earlier signed an agreement to set up a hospital in the country with around 250-300 beds.

A similar agreement is expected to be signed with the authorities in Zimbabwe for a similar project, said Reddy.

"It iss time that we should share our expertise to treat them. What we did for India, we owe it to the rest of the world. Especially the developing world and under developed world," he added.

The healthcare group is looking at providing quality care with cost benefit to these countries.

It is also planning to expand its cancer care network in India, to address the patients in various parts of the country. At present, it has eight cancer care hospitals and plans are to double it in next three years, while the actual goal is to achieve 20 cancer care hospitals, he said.

It is also setting up cancer centres in the existing hospitals, to cover patients across the country. Preetha Reddy, managing director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, has earlier said that the future would be of a hub and spoke model, in which the cancer facilities in multi speciality hospital would refer cases to the cancer speciality hospitals of the Group.

She also said that the Group's efforts to set up a family constitution for the promoter family would take some more time than expected and is expected to be completed by end of the year. Earlier, the family guideline to earmark and assign responsibilities to the family members, especially when the third generation is also in the business now, was expected to come in the first couple of months in 2014.