Chennai: Apollo Hospital, executive chairman Prathap C Reddy said by bringing awareness and attending regular mass screening all non communicable diseases (NCD) are curable.
He was speaking at the launch of the South Asia’s first ever Digital PET CT yesterday at the Apollo Proton Cancer Centre in Taramani, Chennai. The digital photon counting detector uses solid-state sensors to count the individual scintillation photons created during a PET scan.
Prathap said the Apollo Hospitals group feels proud that access to this machine have been provided to 3.6 billion people in South Asia.
He further said the lack of sufficient healthcare programmes in the country will pose an imminent threat in the future and added that he has been requesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to raise the nation’s bite-sized health budget from 1 per cent to 3 per cent.
Apollo Proton Cancer Center, medical director Rakesh Jalali said NCDs such as heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes, etc have taken the world by storm.
“The numbers increase everyday, resulting in the rise of investment to invent new gears to overcome these formidable challenges. The Digital PET CT is one such invention for taking down the NCDs. We are very lucky to have the modern, state-of-the-art facility in Chennai,” he said.
Apollo Hospitals group managing director Sunita Reddy said, “This equipment under our highly trained professionals will help us identify and uproot the NCDs in the initial stages of diagnosis.”
Siemens Healthineers India, executive director, Vivek Kanade said that he was glad to have collaborated with Apollo to make the sophisticated equipment.