By IANS,
New Delhi : Ramakant Panda, who will perform heart bypass surgery on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday, has received a prestigious national award for being among the country’s highest taxpayers, his profile posted on the Asian Heart Institute of which he is the vice chairman, says.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes awarded Panda a Rashtriya Samman (National Honour) for being one of the highest taxpayers during the assessment years 1994-95 to 1998-99.
The surgery, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here will be a homecoming of sorts for Panda because it was at this facility that he received his initial training.
He later did his Fellowship training at the Cleveland Clinic in the US and worked for a year as Senior Registrar at Britain’s Harefield Hospital, where he had the opportunity to train under Professor Magdi Yacoub, considered to be one of the foremost cardiac surgeons in the world.
“Under his leadership, his surgical team has performed in excess of 10,000 bypass surgeries, making him one of the highest-volume surgeons in the world,” the posting said.
“He is also credited with performing more than 700 repeat (redo) bypass surgeries, as well as more than 1,500 high risk surgeries. These surgeries have offered a new lease of life to many patients considered ‘inoperable’,” the posting added.