Global Hospitals plans to set up a full-fledged heart transplant facility at Hyderabad by the end of February. This would be the first of its kind in the country. In heart transplants, the heart is harvested from a brain-dead person and transplanted into a recipient.

Heart transplants are currently being done only at AIIMS of New Delhi, and the Madras Medical Mission Hospital in Chennai. But a full-fledged facility is yet to emerge in India, said Dr Ravindranath, MD, Global Hospitals.

The hospital has procured equipment costing Rs.8 to 9 crore, including an advanced cath lab from Germany. The hospital also has isolation chambers and special provisions have been made for immuno-suppression and infection control. It has sent two heart surgeons to New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, the biggest heart transplant centre in the world.