A new 200-bed mother and child hospital at Udupi, established by NRI entrepreneur B R Shetty under public-private partnership, started functioning today.
 

Vishwesha Teertha Swami of Pejawar Mutt dedicated the hospital, coming in place of the earlier government maternity hospital, at a function in Manipal last evening in the presence of Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare J P Nadda. The Swami, in his speech said the hospital had more facilities than the earlier one and it should be ensured that poor and backward classes received treatment free of cost at the new hospital also.

Nadda said the BRS venture was a unique and first of its-kind public-private partnership hospital project in India. The state government and a private entrepreneur had joined hands to provide world class health care for the poor, he said. Nadda said the Union government's blue health programme introduced in 2017 was a strategic engagement of the private sector in health care. The initiative was concentrating on disease-specific address towards preventive and promotional healthcare services.

Affordability and accountability was the need of the hour in the field of health care, he said. Shetty said the new hospital would serve people belonging to all sections of society. With government help, the BRS group could give its best to the society under public-private partnership, he said, adding that the ventures he started in Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Bhubaneshwar and foreign countries like Nepal and Egypt had all been successful. He thanked Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, state Health Minister Ramesh Kumar and district in-charge Minister Pramod Madhwaraj for their support.