By Express News Service
A little over twenty four years since the Amrita Hospital in Kochi was inaugurated by then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math is now venturing into the north with an Amrita Hospital at Faridabad that will be launched by PM Narendra Modi on August 24.
Spread across 130 acres, it will be India’s largest private hospital. It will also provide jobs to 10000 employees and 800 doctors when it is fully functional. Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri, President of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and Vice-Chairman of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, puts the healthcare mission of the Math in context in an interview to Preetha Nair.
The much-awaited Amrita Hospital at Faridabad, will be inaugurated by PM Modi on August 24. How do you see this venture taking forward the legacy of compassionate and inclusive healthcare?Hope. Care. Love. These are the words that form the cornerstone of one of India’s most advanced medical institutions — one that aims to be a world centre for excellence in health. Born out of Amma’s benevolence, Amrita Hospitals value care before science, and patients as people will always be at the core of all decisions. We are an institution of healing where everyone is welcome, irrespective of race, gender, religion, or economic status, and a healthcare centre that believes service to humanity comes above all else.
By combining compassionate care with cutting-edge technologies and the expertise of highly-trained professionals from around the world, we deliver healthcare services that are ethical, equitable, economical, and evidence based. Our research is guided by innovations in nanotechnology, biotechnology, basic, and clinical medicine. It is continually geared towards finding low-cost solutions to healthcare challenges, improving outcomes, and delivering the safest and highest quality treatments in the most accessible and affordable ways.
When it comes to healthcare that is both high-quality and affordable, it is important to see this from the point of view of the patient. In India, there are huge numbers of people — in both rural and urban areas — who require affordable, high-quality health care for their survival. When we support those at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid, we strengthen our entire society.
To address this, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math’s medical institutions began with Amrita Hospital in Kochi, Kerala in 1998, and it has become a bulwark of the healthcare system in South India. What started as a 125-bed facility is now a 1,300-bed institution that treats 8 lakh outpatients and 50,000 inpatients each year.
The hospital has 12 super-speciality departments and 45 speciality departments and is recognized as one of the premier hospitals in South Asia. Also a teaching hospital, the Government of India in 2022 ranked it as the eighth best medical school in the country.
Now, the Amrita Hospital, Faridabad opens its doors as India’s largest private hospital with the same clear mission — to provide high-quality healthcare while maintaining accessibility to all strata of society. This humungous super-speciality facility will be a substantial addition to the healthcare infrastructure of the country, with its reach all over India and the world.
Tell us about Amma’s vision when it comes to healthcare?Born in 1953 in a poor fishing village in Kerala, Amma only studied up to the fourth standard because her mother fell ill and Amma had to take over care of the family and household duties. Today, she is a world-renowned spiritual leader and humanitarian with millions of devotees around the world. How did such a transformation happen in her life?
As a little girl, Amma witnessed first-hand the stark inequality in the world and wondered about the meaning of suffering. Her search culminated in a decision to dedicate her life to giving love and compassion to as many people as she could. She began to embrace all who came to her, and as of today, has given that motherly care, known as her darshan, to more than 40 million people around the world.
As part of her mission, Amma decided to build healthcare facilities to reach common people across India, as in many places, especially rural areas, healthcare access is limited by cost and reach. As the second most populous country in the world, this makes India’s health problems the world’s problems.
The numbers are truly staggering. More than 60 percent of diabetics, half of the visually impaired, and 60 percent of the globe’s cardio-vascular patients hail from India. But behind the numbers are human beings, and Amma believes that everyone has a right to high-quality healthcare. Thus, her healthcare institutions are dedicated to the people of India for healing the sick, helping the needy, and advancing the cause of medical science for society at large.
Some people may ask, “What need does an ashram have to run hospitals?” Amma explains that it is her vision that service to the world is a means to reach life’s spiritual goals. There are very few people who can practise meditation throughout the entire day, but seva is another pathway to receive God’s grace.
Amma teaches that real worship of the Divine is the compassion we extend towards the suffering — where there is compassion, God is there. God dwells in the hearts of the compassionate. Consoling the sorrowful can be a sadhana greater than meditation. Meditation is as valuable as gold, however if we have compassion for our fellow beings, it is like gold with fragrance.
Amma says this should be the attitude that we have — to love the poor and those suffering whole-heartedly. We should uplift them, going down to their level. That is our obligation to God. We should cultivate a heart filled with compassion. We should have the thirst to serve the suffering people. In any circumstance, we should have the readiness to engage in service for the good of the world.
Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri. (Photo | Special Arrangement)
How are Amma’s compassionate initiatives being implemented?Through her extraordinary acts of inner strength, compassion, and self-sacrifice, Amma also began her international humanitarian mission known as Embracing the World. Her key focuses include providing people in need with food and water, shelter, healthcare, education, training for livelihood, and disaster relief.
Augmenting these efforts, the Math works in the fields of environmental conservation and sustainability to help protect the future of our fragile planet. And through our university, researchers are innovating new means of delivery of goods, knowledge, information, energy and healthcare so that we can get help to those in need here and now, wherever they are.
This pdf outlines Embracing the World’s achievements.
In 2005, the UN conferred Special Consultative Status to the Mata Amritanandamayi Math for its outstanding disaster relief work and other humanitarian activities. In 2008, the UN also approved it as an associated non-governmental organization
All of the Math’s endeavours are guided by the vision that each one of us has so much to contribute to the upliftment of our world. All that is needed is to awaken and unleash the inner potential — each one of us is important, each one of us counts, and we can all make a positive difference to the lives of others.
Significantly, you are now marking your entry into the North with this project. What are the other plans in the pipeline?Apart from the much-awaited hospital that is getting inaugurated by the Hon’ble PM on August 24, the hospital will be home to Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s eighth university campus with schools of medicine, nursing, and dentistry once all government approvals are finalized. It will run India’s largest School of Allied Health Sciences and focus on providing a range of diagnostic, technical, therapeutic, and support services with16 undergraduate and 16 postgraduate programmes.
Research is another crucial initiative for Amrita Hospital, Faridabad with a focus on finding innovative and low-cost solutions for today’s healthcare challenges. The hospital will operate a state-of-the-art robotics, haptic, and surgical-medical simulation centre. Built across an area of 1.5 lakh square feet and spread across four floors, it will be the largest such facility in India.
The first of its kind Amrita Hospital in Kochi is a blessing for the poor and the needy. How have 24 years of the hospital and its emphasis on research benefitted society?Organ transplants have been one of the hospital’s key achievements with 2,148 procedures performed, involving liver, kidney, pancreas, small bowel, heart, and cornea.
Surgeons at Amrita Hospital have attained remarkable milestones, the most recent being India’s first reconstruction of a nine-month-old’s breast bone supported by 3D printing.
In a rare birth defect called ‘congenital absence of sternum or breastbone’, a team of doctors printed out a life-size model of the baby’s chest from CT scan using advanced 3D printing software and 3D printing machines within the hospital. The complex surgical procedure was planned to the last detail and simulated using the model. This is perhaps the first time in the world that 3D printing technology was used to understand and treat such a defect in a child.
The teams have also performed Asia’s first upper-arm double hand transplant, India’s first two double hand transplants, and the country’s first successful surgery on a foetus in the womb.
Amrita Hospital, Kochi is also home to India’s first School of Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine and is now well-recognized nationally and internationally for its academic and research contributions in the field of nanomedicine, molecular medicine, energy science and engineering.
Also, as a solution for the challenging pandemic, Amrita Hospitals in collaboration with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham conducted a study and identified that inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) therapy kills the SARS-COV-2 virus. This study helps patients recover faster with lesser complications and zero mortality rates compared to patients who received the standard Covid-19 treatment without iNO.
Similarly, a sequencer and real-time PCR and thermal cyclers have been developed to enable provision of diagnostic genetics for common inherited diseases and also to aid in research.
Currently, Amrita School of Biotechnology is working on India’s first indigenously designed automated insulin pump and glucose sensor to offer high-quality, low-cost, precise and personalized care for India’s multiplying diabetic population.
The university focuses on improving the quality of life for those in need by cultivating one of the fastest-growing, robust research programs in the country. With the support of quality standards backed up by the state-of-the-art infrastructure along with expertise, Amrita Hospitals have emerged as a preferred destination for multi centred international clinical studies.
The researchers at Amrita along with senior scientists in the world’s leading research universities are working to innovate new uses for existing technology and to invent entirely new products and approaches to solving some of the world’s most pressing needs — from disaster management to the management and cure of disease.
The prime goal of research at Amrita Hospital is to make India self-reliant by locally creating affordable healthcare needs. For example, Amrita has developed PAPR (Powered Air Purifying Respirator), a protection equipment for healthcare workers, from scratch during the advent of pandemic. The equipment helps to provide purified air to medical professionals working in infection prone areas. PAPRs are generally safer, more comfortable, and reusable as compared to the PPEs (personal protective equipment) used in conjunction with N95 masks. The PAPRs in India were imported and cost from $1000 to $2000 US. Meanwhile, the kit developed at Amrita costs less than $400 US.
What are the state-of-the-art facilities on offer in Amrita Hospital at Faridabad?Amrita Hospital, Faridabad is spread across 130 acres and will centre around a 14-storey tower that will house all key areas. The hospital will have 2,600 beds, 81 specialities, 64 fully-networked modular operation theatres, and smart ICUs with 534 critical care beds. It begins as home to eight Centres of Excellence, including radiation oncology, cardiac sciences, neurosciences, gastro sciences, renal sciences, bone diseases and trauma, transplants, and mother and child care.
At Amrita Hospital, Faridabad, the health of women and children comes foremost as this is an area that many private hospitals in India are not able to sustain financially. It will be home to India’s largest paediatric super-speciality centre in a seven-floor building and will run maternal and foetal medicine and all paediatric subspecialities, including a 40-bed unit of nursery and neonatal intensive care. Specialities are cardiology, heart surgery and transplantation, rheumatology, endocrinology, pulmonology, neurosciences, gastroenterology, genetics, orthopaedics, and paediatric and foetal surgery.
Advanced technology will support the hospital’s large spectrum of practice, including state-of-the-art fully-automated smart laboratories, the most advanced medical imaging services in the country, and the latest in cardiac and interventional cath labs for clinical services. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital is also prioritizing India’s largest facilities for infectious diseases.
Key numbers:• 2,600 beds• 81 specialities• A sprawling 130-acre campus• A 5.2 lakh square-foot medical college• 64 fully networked modular operation theatres• Smart ICUs with 534 critical care beds that are digitally monitored around-the-clock• The largest paediatric super-speciality centre in India dedicated to mother and child care• State-of-the-art fully automated smart laboratories• The most advanced medical imaging services in the country• High-precision radiation oncology, the largest of its kind in the country• India’s largest and most advanced physical medicine and rehabilitation centre• Centre of Excellence for Nuclear Medicine in diagnostics and therapeutics• Latest in cardiac and interventional cath lab for clinical services• Largest facilities to handle infectious diseases• Dedicated research block• The largest centre in the country for robotics, haptic, cadaveric, high-fidelity, surgical and medical simulation
What will be the investment and job opportunity the facility creates?From an economic perspective, the hospital will provide immediate support to the region with direct employment for approximately 2,000 individuals and indirect opportunities for an additional 2,000 employees. By the time it is fully operational, it will have approximately 10,000 employees and more than 800 doctors.
Going beyond healthcare, what are the community initiatives going to be taken up by the Faridabad facility?Amrita Hospital, Faridabad is an important add-on to India’s health infrastructure. It’s one of the biggest environmental health projects in the country with a low carbon footprint, and it’s a paperless end-to-end facility with zero waste discharge. One of the noteworthy features of the magnanimous Amrita Hospital is that its design will have minimal impact upon the environment. The facility is all set to handle the issue of water supply through a rainwater harvesting system, efficient water fixtures, and use of recycled water. This feature will also help to reduce the consumption of portable water by approx. 42%. As part of its community initiatives, Amrita Hospitals have already initiated medical awareness programs in various residential wellness associations in and around Faridabad. These include outreach programs for seniors focused on people with neurological conditions, health conferences for school children, general health checks, and much more.
A little over twenty four years since the Amrita Hospital in Kochi was inaugurated by then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math is now venturing into the north with an Amrita Hospital at Faridabad that will be launched by PM Narendra Modi on August 24.
Spread across 130 acres, it will be India’s largest private hospital. It will also provide jobs to 10000 employees and 800 doctors when it is fully functional. Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri, President of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and Vice-Chairman of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, puts the healthcare mission of the Math in context in an interview to Preetha Nair.
The much-awaited Amrita Hospital at Faridabad, will be inaugurated by PM Modi on August 24. How do you see this venture taking forward the legacy of compassionate and inclusive healthcare?
Hope. Care. Love. These are the words that form the cornerstone of one of India’s most advanced medical institutions — one that aims to be a world centre for excellence in health. Born out of Amma’s benevolence, Amrita Hospitals value care before science, and patients as people will always be at the core of all decisions. We are an institution of healing where everyone is welcome, irrespective of race, gender, religion, or economic status, and a healthcare centre that believes service to humanity comes above all else.
By combining compassionate care with cutting-edge technologies and the expertise of highly-trained professionals from around the world, we deliver healthcare services that are ethical, equitable, economical, and evidence based. Our research is guided by innovations in nanotechnology, biotechnology, basic, and clinical medicine. It is continually geared towards finding low-cost solutions to healthcare challenges, improving outcomes, and delivering the safest and highest quality treatments in the most accessible and affordable ways.
When it comes to healthcare that is both high-quality and affordable, it is important to see this from the point of view of the patient. In India, there are huge numbers of people — in both rural and urban areas — who require affordable, high-quality health care for their survival. When we support those at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid, we strengthen our entire society.
To address this, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math’s medical institutions began with Amrita Hospital in Kochi, Kerala in 1998, and it has become a bulwark of the healthcare system in South India. What started as a 125-bed facility is now a 1,300-bed institution that treats 8 lakh outpatients and 50,000 inpatients each year.
The hospital has 12 super-speciality departments and 45 speciality departments and is recognized as one of the premier hospitals in South Asia. Also a teaching hospital, the Government of India in 2022 ranked it as the eighth best medical school in the country.
Now, the Amrita Hospital, Faridabad opens its doors as India’s largest private hospital with the same clear mission — to provide high-quality healthcare while maintaining accessibility to all strata of society. This humungous super-speciality facility will be a substantial addition to the healthcare infrastructure of the country, with its reach all over India and the world.
Tell us about Amma’s vision when it comes to healthcare?
Born in 1953 in a poor fishing village in Kerala, Amma only studied up to the fourth standard because her mother fell ill and Amma had to take over care of the family and household duties. Today, she is a world-renowned spiritual leader and humanitarian with millions of devotees around the world. How did such a transformation happen in her life?
As a little girl, Amma witnessed first-hand the stark inequality in the world and wondered about the meaning of suffering. Her search culminated in a decision to dedicate her life to giving love and compassion to as many people as she could. She began to embrace all who came to her, and as of today, has given that motherly care, known as her darshan, to more than 40 million people around the world.
As part of her mission, Amma decided to build healthcare facilities to reach common people across India, as in many places, especially rural areas, healthcare access is limited by cost and reach. As the second most populous country in the world, this makes India’s health problems the world’s problems.
The numbers are truly staggering. More than 60 percent of diabetics, half of the visually impaired, and 60 percent of the globe’s cardio-vascular patients hail from India. But behind the numbers are human beings, and Amma believes that everyone has a right to high-quality healthcare. Thus, her healthcare institutions are dedicated to the people of India for healing the sick, helping the needy, and advancing the cause of medical science for society at large.
Some people may ask, “What need does an ashram have to run hospitals?” Amma explains that it is her vision that service to the world is a means to reach life’s spiritual goals. There are very few people who can practise meditation throughout the entire day, but seva is another pathway to receive God’s grace.
Amma teaches that real worship of the Divine is the compassion we extend towards the suffering — where there is compassion, God is there. God dwells in the hearts of the compassionate. Consoling the sorrowful can be a sadhana greater than meditation. Meditation is as valuable as gold, however if we have compassion for our fellow beings, it is like gold with fragrance.
Amma says this should be the attitude that we have — to love the poor and those suffering whole-heartedly. We should uplift them, going down to their level. That is our obligation to God. We should cultivate a heart filled with compassion. We should have the thirst to serve the suffering people. In any circumstance, we should have the readiness to engage in service for the good of the world.
Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri. (Photo | Special Arrangement)
How are Amma’s compassionate initiatives being implemented?
Through her extraordinary acts of inner strength, compassion, and self-sacrifice, Amma also began her international humanitarian mission known as Embracing the World. Her key focuses include providing people in need with food and water, shelter, healthcare, education, training for livelihood, and disaster relief.
Augmenting these efforts, the Math works in the fields of environmental conservation and sustainability to help protect the future of our fragile planet. And through our university, researchers are innovating new means of delivery of goods, knowledge, information, energy and healthcare so that we can get help to those in need here and now, wherever they are.
This pdf outlines Embracing the World’s achievements.
In 2005, the UN conferred Special Consultative Status to the Mata Amritanandamayi Math for its outstanding disaster relief work and other humanitarian activities. In 2008, the UN also approved it as an associated non-governmental organization
All of the Math’s endeavours are guided by the vision that each one of us has so much to contribute to the upliftment of our world. All that is needed is to awaken and unleash the inner potential — each one of us is important, each one of us counts, and we can all make a positive difference to the lives of others.
Significantly, you are now marking your entry into the North with this project. What are the other plans in the pipeline?
Apart from the much-awaited hospital that is getting inaugurated by the Hon’ble PM on August 24, the hospital will be home to Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s eighth university campus with schools of medicine, nursing, and dentistry once all government approvals are finalized. It will run India’s largest School of Allied Health Sciences and focus on providing a range of diagnostic, technical, therapeutic, and support services with16 undergraduate and 16 postgraduate programmes.
Research is another crucial initiative for Amrita Hospital, Faridabad with a focus on finding innovative and low-cost solutions for today’s healthcare challenges. The hospital will operate a state-of-the-art robotics, haptic, and surgical-medical simulation centre. Built across an area of 1.5 lakh square feet and spread across four floors, it will be the largest such facility in India.
The first of its kind Amrita Hospital in Kochi is a blessing for the poor and the needy. How have 24 years of the hospital and its emphasis on research benefitted society?
Organ transplants have been one of the hospital’s key achievements with 2,148 procedures performed, involving liver, kidney, pancreas, small bowel, heart, and cornea.
Surgeons at Amrita Hospital have attained remarkable milestones, the most recent being India’s first reconstruction of a nine-month-old’s breast bone supported by 3D printing.
In a rare birth defect called ‘congenital absence of sternum or breastbone’, a team of doctors printed out a life-size model of the baby’s chest from CT scan using advanced 3D printing software and 3D printing machines within the hospital. The complex surgical procedure was planned to the last detail and simulated using the model. This is perhaps the first time in the world that 3D printing technology was used to understand and treat such a defect in a child.
The teams have also performed Asia’s first upper-arm double hand transplant, India’s first two double hand transplants, and the country’s first successful surgery on a foetus in the womb.
Amrita Hospital, Kochi is also home to India’s first School of Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine and is now well-recognized nationally and internationally for its academic and research contributions in the field of nanomedicine, molecular medicine, energy science and engineering.
Also, as a solution for the challenging pandemic, Amrita Hospitals in collaboration with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham conducted a study and identified that inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) therapy kills the SARS-COV-2 virus. This study helps patients recover faster with lesser complications and zero mortality rates compared to patients who received the standard Covid-19 treatment without iNO.
Similarly, a sequencer and real-time PCR and thermal cyclers have been developed to enable provision of diagnostic genetics for common inherited diseases and also to aid in research.
Currently, Amrita School of Biotechnology is working on India’s first indigenously designed automated insulin pump and glucose sensor to offer high-quality, low-cost, precise and personalized care for India’s multiplying diabetic population.
The university focuses on improving the quality of life for those in need by cultivating one of the fastest-growing, robust research programs in the country. With the support of quality standards backed up by the state-of-the-art infrastructure along with expertise, Amrita Hospitals have emerged as a preferred destination for multi centred international clinical studies.
The researchers at Amrita along with senior scientists in the world’s leading research universities are working to innovate new uses for existing technology and to invent entirely new products and approaches to solving some of the world’s most pressing needs — from disaster management to the management and cure of disease.
The prime goal of research at Amrita Hospital is to make India self-reliant by locally creating affordable healthcare needs. For example, Amrita has developed PAPR (Powered Air Purifying Respirator), a protection equipment for healthcare workers, from scratch during the advent of pandemic. The equipment helps to provide purified air to medical professionals working in infection prone areas. PAPRs are generally safer, more comfortable, and reusable as compared to the PPEs (personal protective equipment) used in conjunction with N95 masks. The PAPRs in India were imported and cost from $1000 to $2000 US. Meanwhile, the kit developed at Amrita costs less than $400 US.
What are the state-of-the-art facilities on offer in Amrita Hospital at Faridabad?
Amrita Hospital, Faridabad is spread across 130 acres and will centre around a 14-storey tower that will house all key areas. The hospital will have 2,600 beds, 81 specialities, 64 fully-networked modular operation theatres, and smart ICUs with 534 critical care beds. It begins as home to eight Centres of Excellence, including radiation oncology, cardiac sciences, neurosciences, gastro sciences, renal sciences, bone diseases and trauma, transplants, and mother and child care.
At Amrita Hospital, Faridabad, the health of women and children comes foremost as this is an area that many private hospitals in India are not able to sustain financially. It will be home to India’s largest paediatric super-speciality centre in a seven-floor building and will run maternal and foetal medicine and all paediatric subspecialities, including a 40-bed unit of nursery and neonatal intensive care. Specialities are cardiology, heart surgery and transplantation, rheumatology, endocrinology, pulmonology, neurosciences, gastroenterology, genetics, orthopaedics, and paediatric and foetal surgery.
Advanced technology will support the hospital’s large spectrum of practice, including state-of-the-art fully-automated smart laboratories, the most advanced medical imaging services in the country, and the latest in cardiac and interventional cath labs for clinical services. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital is also prioritizing India’s largest facilities for infectious diseases.
Key numbers:
• 2,600 beds
• 81 specialities
• A sprawling 130-acre campus
• A 5.2 lakh square-foot medical college
• 64 fully networked modular operation theatres
• Smart ICUs with 534 critical care beds that are digitally monitored around-the-clock
• The largest paediatric super-speciality centre in India dedicated to mother and child care
• State-of-the-art fully automated smart laboratories
• The most advanced medical imaging services in the country
• High-precision radiation oncology, the largest of its kind in the country
• India’s largest and most advanced physical medicine and rehabilitation centre
• Centre of Excellence for Nuclear Medicine in diagnostics and therapeutics
• Latest in cardiac and interventional cath lab for clinical services
• Largest facilities to handle infectious diseases
• Dedicated research block
• The largest centre in the country for robotics, haptic, cadaveric, high-fidelity, surgical and medical simulation
What will be the investment and job opportunity the facility creates?
From an economic perspective, the hospital will provide immediate support to the region with direct employment for approximately 2,000 individuals and indirect opportunities for an additional 2,000 employees. By the time it is fully operational, it will have approximately 10,000 employees and more than 800 doctors.
Going beyond healthcare, what are the community initiatives going to be taken up by the Faridabad facility?
Amrita Hospital, Faridabad is an important add-on to India’s health infrastructure. It’s one of the biggest environmental health projects in the country with a low carbon footprint, and it’s a paperless end-to-end facility with zero waste discharge. One of the noteworthy features of the magnanimous Amrita Hospital is that its design will have minimal impact upon the environment. The facility is all set to handle the issue of water supply through a rainwater harvesting system, efficient water fixtures, and use of recycled water. This feature will also help to reduce the consumption of portable water by approx. 42%.
As part of its community initiatives, Amrita Hospitals have already initiated medical awareness programs in various residential wellness associations in and around Faridabad. These include outreach programs for seniors focused on people with neurological conditions, health conferences for school children, general health checks, and much more.
