Kalam to inaugurate ‘dream’ medical project in Hyderabad
Indo-Asian News Service
Hyderabad, June 28 (IANS) Weeks before relinquishing office, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam will Friday inaugurate his dream project to develop medical devices indigenously and at affordable cost.
Almost a decade after jointly developing India’s first indigenous coronary stent ‘Kalam-Raju stent’ with eminent cardiologist B. Somaraju here, Kalam will inaugurate Asia’s first catheter manufacturing and research and development facility.
The facility will significantly bring down the cost of catheters and stents, which are currently imported and are not affordable to majority of patients.
The stage is set for the facility’s inauguration at Mangalapally village, about 40 km from here. The facility will initially have manufacturing capacity of 200,000 stents and 120,000 diagnostic catheters per year.
The Rs.300 integrated facility has come up on 10 acres of land as per the GMP (global manufacturing practices) standards and has R&D, catheter manufacturing and stent development units.
“We can bring down the cost of both stents and catheters by 40 to 70 percent,” said Krishna Reddy, Chairman, Relisys Medical Devices Limited.
Catheters used in various angiographic procedures in radiology and cardiology are currently being imported from the US and Europe. “We will not only produce globally competitive devices but will also be able to offer the same to domestic consumers at a very affordable cost,” said Reddy.
About 600,000 angiographic procedures are done every month in India in which the cost of the catheter is put at Rs.4,000.
The imported medicated stent costs Rs.100,000 and non-medicated stent Rs.45,000 to Rs.55,000.
Stents are devices, which help clear blocks in blood vessels, are made of different materials such as medical grade steel, titanium, plastics, etc.
“If we make the stents affordable it will be a huge domestic market with a requirement of half a million stents every year,” said N.G. Badrinarayana, Managing Director, Relysis Medical Devices Ltd.
He said the company, which also planned to export the products, would not focus on revenues for the first two years. However, it expects a turnover of Rs.800 million to Rs.1 billion from the third year.
He pointed out that the company was in talks with many multinational companies, which are keen for contract manufacturing of stents.
Relisys was set up by a group of medical and technical professionals in 1998 with a mission to manufacture medical products indigenously to make quality healthcare more accessible to the common man.
It had marketed ‘Kalam-Raju’ stent, which was developed when Kalam was heading Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) here. The product was withdrawn in 2001 as it was made of coil and coil stents were phased out worldwide by then.
The company, in collaboration with various research institutes, developed many cardiology disposables. Last year, it announced collaboration with German technology company Cinvention for a new coronary stent.