Aster DM Healthcare: Towards a healthier India

As an Indian doctor turned entrepreneur, it makes me very proud to see that my country is one of the fastest growing economies in the world today and expected to maintain this momentum as it continues to lead the world through advancements across domains. As we progress, our ability to thrive as a nation is intricately linked to the health of our people because the most significant natural resource a society has is its people, and its success depends on how well they are nurtured.
We, at Aster DM Healthcare, firmly believe that an accessible, affordable and quality driven healthcare system should be a key step in our journey towards building a nation as a global economic powerhouse. In the UAE, we have already witnessed our visionary rulers identifying the health and wellbeing of our people as a key indicator of happiness. We are glad that the Indian Government has also rolled out many proactive initiatives to make quality healthcare more attainable for its citizens.
As we celebrate the 72nd Indian Independence Day today, I applaud the efforts of our government and our people to put utmost priority to health and well-being. We have come a long way, and there is still further opportunity to shape the sector and ensure that good health and happiness of people becomes a key indicator for recognising development.
We established our presence in India in 2001, with the setting up of Malabar Institute of Medical Science in Calicut (Aster MIMS), Kerala. Since then we have gone from strength to strength with 11 hospitals offering a wide range of specialised tertiary and quaternary healthcare services. Today, we have 1,430 doctors and 5,935 nurses across geographies, working together to serve the common purpose of making a positive difference in the lives of our patients that we serve every day. We are also proud to say that all our hospitals in India are accredited by the NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers), with many of our highly specialised doctors performing procedures which are first in the country. With a bed capacity of 3,887 across units and facilities like Aster Medcity and Aster CMI Hospitals recognised across the country for delivering excellence in patient care through their Centres of Excellence, we remain committed to providing the best healthcare services to our patients.
We recognise the need to strengthen the roots for a healthy society, and currently we aim to significantly accelerate our presence in India as well as the GCC. We are coming up with a new hospital project in Kannur in Kerala, which will be a 240-bed tertiary care facility focusing on specialities like Cardiac, Orthopaedics, Urology, Nephrology, Neuro and Gastro. We are also set to start our second hospital in Bangalore. In Dubai, we are about to commence operations for a state-of-the-art multi-speciality hospital in Qusais matching international standards. It will be a 150-bedded facility where doctors will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to provide holistic treatment to patients.
Our belief of profit being a by-product and not our purpose in healthcare continues to drive our efforts as an organisation to push boundaries of excellence and meet the needs of people who are less privileged than us. With this thinking, we launched the Aster Volunteers Global Programme on the occasion of our 30th anniversary in 2017, with an aim to bridge the gap between people who would like to help with those in need. Today, it is running successfully across the nine countries in which we are present, with 8,217 volunteers coming from all walks of life and not exclusively from the medical field. In all 624,397 lives have been impacted through various initiatives of this programme, till March 2018.
As a leading healthcare group in the country, we firmly believe that "a healthy society is a productive society'' and hence we remain committed to ensuring health and well-being for all through enabling more comprehensive access to quality and affordable care.

Dr. Azad Moopen is Founder Chairman and Managing Director of Aster DM Healthcare.