Dr Ramakanta Panda On Why Bankers, Techies Are Most Susceptible To Heart Disease
6/25/202629 min
Eighty percent of Dr Ramakanta Panda's young cardiac patients — below 35, below 40 — work in IT or finance. Late nights, processed food, 2 AM pizza, secondhand smoke, and a generation that doesn't sleep before midnight. The Padma Bhushan awardee and Chairman of Asian Heart Institute, Mumbai has performed over 30,000 cardiac surgeries with a 99.8% bypass success rate and zero MRSA in his ICU — all from one hospital he has refused to franchise, refused to debt-finance, and refused to sell to private equity. Every week, he says no. In this episode of The Morning Brief, ET's pharma editor Vikas Dandekar and Rica Bhattacharyya sit down with Dr. Panda on why India cannot fix its healthcare issues by solely relying on private healthcare — and whether one hospital built on culture can set standards an industry built on capital never will.
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Check out other interesting episodes like:ET Deep Dive: Swipe Left on Reality,India wants manufacturing at 25% of GDP — will AI in factories help?, Tanay Kothari Wants To Kill The Keyboard,From Doer to Director: The LinkedIn Playbook for the AI Agea, Semaglutide Goes Generic: Big Pharma’s Moat Breaks and much more.
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First 90 secondsRica Bhattacharyya· Host0:00
[intro music] Heart disease is no longer a problem of old age. In India today, one in five heart attack patients is under the age of 40, and cardiovascular diseases account for nearly a quarter of all deaths. Behind these alarming numbers lies a lifestyle crisis driven by stress, poor sleep, sedentary habits, and unhealthy diets. Joining us to unpack this growing challenge is one of the country's most respected cardiac surgeons, Dr. Ramakanth Panda. A Padma Bhushan awardee and founder of Asian Heart Institute, Mumbai, Dr. Panda has performed more than 31,000 successful heart surgeries with a success rate of 99.8%. In this conversation with ET's pharma editor, Vikas Dandekar and me, Dr. Panda shares why younger Indians are increasingly at risk, what we are getting wrong about heart health, and why prevention, not treatment, must become our national priority. It's Thursday, the 25th of June. I am Rika Bhattacharya. This is The Morning Brief.
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