Fixing India’s broken healthcare infra at the bottom, Ujala Cygnus is a rare example

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Synopsis
India’s smaller cities and hinterland remain a neglected lot even as five-star specialty hospitals flourish in the metros. To have its healthcare parameters on track, India needs an urgent flow of investments in tertiary-care hospitals in tier-II and tier-III cities. But building and managing tertiary-care hospitals isn’t easy. Examples like Ujala Cygnus can show the way forward.

On a late November evening, Pratap Singh (name changed), 53, a resident of Mahendragarh in Haryana had a shooting abdominal pain. As he was rushed to a hospital in Gurugram, over a hundred kilometers away, he started vomiting blood. Singh succumbed on his way due to profuse variceal bleeding. Diagnosed acute decompensated liver failure, the blood vessels in his stomach had dilated and ruptured, leaving no chance for the doctors to save him.