The Visionary Doctor

Dr Alok Roy, Vice President, Fortis’ Centre for Community Initiative, has to his credit the record of building the maximum number of hospitals in India. But his heart beats for rural healthcare. He talks to Sapna Dogra about his life, profession and dreams

Micro health insurance, telemedicine, HIV/AIDS and corporate social responsibility are the four areas where the 48-year-old Dr Alok Roy’s heart lies these days. According to him, weak forces drive the world because strong forces are very few and they can’t bring in any change. Therefore, it is important to empower the weak and healthcare is an intrinsic part of the process. To change the lives of the people in the hinterland, corporate hospitals won’t really help, says the philosopher doctor. These four arenas can change the lives of the people, which is more important than merely providing treatment, professes Dr Roy.

A Born Leader

Born in 1958 in Allahabad, Dr Alok Roy had a normal middle-class upbringing. He is the youngest of the five siblings (two brothers and three sisters), but calls himself the mentor as they all listen to his advice. His father had a transferable job in the Central Government, which made the family traverse the entire length and breadth of the country, including Delhi, Maharashtra (Mumbai) and Orissa. “I guess this is the reason that I don’t feel I belong to one region or state but I feel for the entire country,” states Dr Roy. However, he has a soft corner for Kolkata because he spent eight important years of his professional life there and built four hospitals.

Being the youngest in the family, naturally he was naughty and mischievous, but he was a bright student. He used to play cricket in school and college, and was a part of NCC. He was a shooter. He also contested in college elections and won. “I would take part in each and every competition both at school and college level,” he remembers. Though no one in his family was a medico, since childhood Roy nurtured the ambition of being doctor. The reason was noble. He thought a doctor could have an impact on other people’s lives besides being respected by all.

As a youngster he used to read avidly since there was no TV then. He devoured classics by literary luminaries like Premchand, Tarachand Bandopadhaya et al. “I think vernacular literature is very rich and I had read all the classics in Hindi and Bangla while I was in school,” divulges Roy. Currently, he is reading ‘Managing Without Power’ by R Meredith Belbin. According to him, “It is an interesting book on gender, which says anything weak will sustain in the long run.”

Beginning Of An Illustrious Career

After class 12, he sat for the medical entrance test and was seventh in merit for SCB Medical College, Cuttack in 1976. At that time, his father was posted in Cuttack. In 1983, he joined the AIIMS for PG in nuclear medicine. After that he did one year DRM from Mumbai. What made him choose nuclear cardiology? “It was a lesser-known field that time and I loved challenges,” he reasons. Also, there were limited options; he wanted to do something different.

He had opportunities to go abroad at that time. “AIIMS was producing PGs to go to the US,” he says. But the patriot in him didn’t want to leave India and he decided to stay back because there was so much to do here.

On May 10, 1988, he got an offer to join BM Birla Heart Centre. “That time there were not many private hospitals in the country except for a few like Jaslok Hospital and Bombay Hospital and though I got a job as Assistant Professor at SGPGI Lucknow, I decided to join the private hospital, which was a very bold step those days,” he reminisces. Everyone was against this decision, but his wife Kavita supported him all the way through.

He helped set up the 140-bed BM Birla Heart Research Institute in Kolkata in 1989. He also managed the institute for about eight years, during which period more than 8,000 major heart operations were performed there. In 1996, he joined Manipal Heart Foundation (MHF) and was responsible for the turnkey management at MHF, a 200-bed heart hospital project. “It had six operation theatres to perform 12-14 heart surgeries a day and three cardiac catheterisation laboratories. The centre performed 6,000 major heart surgeries in a record period of less than four years,” says Dr Roy. In the year 2000, he set up the 130-bed Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, Kolkata for the working class families of West Bengal in association with the Government of West Bengal. He has also been successful in setting up the world’s largest 780-bed super speciality heart hospital, Narayana Hrudayalaya in Bangalore. The first phase of this hospital with 280 beds was commissioned in April 2001 and has already achieved a path-breaking record of performing over 4,500 surgeries, over a period of 18 months. He also built Armenian Church Trauma Centre in 2004.

In 2005, Roy joined Fortis Hospital Noida as its CEO and under his guidance, the hospital has earned a name for world-class facilities and treatment at affordable rates. “I wanted Fortis to be more than just a healthcare delivery centre, it should work beyond the realm of health providers; hence we started telemedicine, micro-health insurance activities and, health camps,” says the visionary doctor.

Re-engineering of hospitals is Roy’s passion. Recently, Rahul Gandhi entrusted him with the responsibility of revamping the 300-bed Sanjay Gandhi Hospital at Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, which was built in 1984. It is a not-for-profit hospital which Roy would turnaround so that it can carry out 5,000 OPDs per month and 6,000 surgeries per month.

Even as he heads a corporate hospital, Dr Roy says, “Corporate hospitals don’t have the reach nor have the inclination to work for the people of the hinterland. If I can create two-three hospitals to serve the rural people that would really satisfy me.”

Dr Roy has been instrumental in conceptualising and implementing Asia’s biggest telemedicine initiative, ‘Integrated Telemedicine & Telehealth Project’ (ITTP). This network not only covers the entire length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent, but also extends to other countries like Mauritius and Malaysia. “The seed of telemedicine was sowed when I used to go for camps in rural places and found that there was an acute need for strong communications,” he says.

“I was in Kolkata working with the Rabindranath Centre and there I thought about telemedicine as a bridge between the rural health centres to the main hospitals in the city, as putting up more hospital beds and clinics is obviously not the answer,” he adds.

Telemedicine — doctors advising treatment over the video — will help a general practitioner in a remote area to hook up with an expert in a more advanced urban centre. The virtual clinic is the only way out, he says. It is about taking knowledge to people who need it, adds Roy. The idea is to create knowledge centres.

“Telemedicine has been made possible in the country by the Government. The Central Government provides satellites connectivity and State Governments give their hospitals. I feel that public-private partnership can reform the existing healthcare scenario,” professes Roy.

He further says there are two major problems in the country: that is health is either inaccessible or unaffordable. For making it accessible, Roy says telemedicine is the answer and for making it affordable only micro-health insurance can help.

Influences In Life

Roy has been greatly influenced by Mother Teresa with whom he interacted on a daily basis while in Kolkata. Her compassion and worldly views had an indelible impression on him. “She was an intelligent lady,” he says. The Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi is his role model. “Here was a man who could have anything he wanted but he chose to forsake everything,” Roy says and adds that, “There was a streak of detachment in him that’s very important for everyone to have if you want to do great things.”

His father, who is also his role model, was democratic in every way and let his children decide and be whatever they wanted to be. “I have learnt to be patient and non-judgmental from him,” informs Roy.

Achievements

In physical sense and material gainsterms, the hospitals he built and the accolades he won could be called his achievements. However, for Dr Roy it is the people who linked with him and gained from him made him feel very proud and contented with their achievements. And he had mentored many a protégé in his illustrious career. “There’s an indescribable pride I feel deep inside me upon seeing their success,” he says. Incidentally, Dr Roy is the only person to have built 17 hospitals in the country.

Time Off

Roy loves to go to hill stations for vacations with family. He has two sons; the elder one is studying medicine at Stanley Medical College, Madras and the younger one is in class 11 in Delhi. His wife works for spastics children. He says, “My soul is trapped in the hills.” Every year, for two weeks or so, he goes for trekking in the hills.

He likes to listen to old Hindi songs, but falls asleep after hearing the first line. He has such busy schedule that he can fall asleep in a fraction of seconds. “I don’t watch movies and have no clue about actors or actresses,” says he. Interestingly, he goes for a morning walk every morning and walks 3.5 kilometers. He also enjoys horse riding.

Ambitions

Since Roy loves the hills, he feels for the people of the hills and dreams of building a small 50-bed hospital and training facility for the people of Uttaranchal. He also harbours another ambition of bringing skill enhancements into rural health practitioners like other traditional practitioners and even quacks.

“They consist of a good 50 per cent of the healthcare providers besides the Homeopathy, Ayurveda etc. And since we can’t wish them away, it is better to tell them about good and bad practices so they would be careful while dealing with patients like washing hands, knowledge of medicines knowledge etc,” says Roy.

“Whenever I visit the hills the resolve gets stronger to do something for them,” he says assiduously. He is working 24x7 and doesn’t get tired because as he says, “No one gets a second chance in life so live every moment to the fullest.” And if given a chance, he would live the same life all over again.

sapna.dogra@expressindia.com