India's leading healthcare group Manipal Health Systems (MHS) now offers a comprehensive, region-wide heart care programme, with the widest spectrum of medical expertise for all age groups and all forms of heart diseases. The hospital majors provide this service through their latest initiative Manipal Heart Institute (MHI).

MHI is also launching 3 cardiac screening vans. The customized mobile vans are equipped with facilities like ECG and Echo and will travel extensively across the region.

It will screen over 1 lakh people for free in the coming 12 months. Children, who are extremely vulnerable to Congenital Heart Diseases (CHD), will be a key beneficiary of the programme. And as part of its awareness campaigns, MHI has prepared a series of mult-lingual educative literatures and educational films about heart diseases.

According to World Health Organization, India will account for 60 per cent of the world's heart patients by 2010. Not just the adults, every year, nearly 180,000 children are born with CHD in India. About 10 per cent of present infant mortality in India may be due to CHD alone.

According to an estimation model, Karnataka alone could have over two lakh people requiring tertiary care intervention right now, where as in entire South India the number could run beyond 5 lakh. Thousands of people, suffering from heart diseases, are dieing across the country due to ignorance and poverty.

In the context of such an alarming scenario, through MHI, MHS hopes to provide a platform for the best professionals to deliver clinical excellence, education and research. The institute will offer a larger than life landscape, which is required to combat the epidemic nature of heart diseases.

According to R. Basil, MD and CEO, Manipal Health Systems the Group has been working in this programme for the last one year. During this period we have gathered together some of the best doctors from India and abroad to offer comprehensive heart care comparable to the best hospitals in the world."

MHI offers a team of heart specialists, who combine over 450 man years of experience in treating heart problems. At the time of the launch, MHI has close to 40 heart specialists, who have collectively undertaken over 100, 000 heart surgeries and procedures. Quite a few of these doctors are US and UK board certified.

The team at MHI will offer heart care for all age groups - from unborn babies, neo natals, infants, and children to adults and even the elderly over ninety. The extensive types of heart treatment will encompass preventive and non-invasive heart care as well as the most complex procedures and surgeries.

The services will initially be offered in Bangalore, Mangalore, Manipal, Vijayawada and Salem and will soon extend to other important cities of the region.

But according to MHS, this alone is not sufficient, given the magnitude of the situation. MHS plans to take heart care to the door steps of the people of the region. Towards achieving this, MHI will implement an out-reach programme that will enable people living in the urban, semi-urban and rural areas of Karnataka and adjoining districts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala to access quality care through Cardiac OPD clinics, telemedicine facilities, heart emergency centres and mobile heart care vans.

As part of phase one initiatives, 27 heart emergency centres will soon be opened across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.