Louis Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby born in July, 1978, is now a doctor in the UK. Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyaya, the creator of India's first-test baby, Durga alias Kanupriya Agrawal in Kolkata (in October 1978) was ‘recognised' only in 2006. His tragic suicide after social ostracization and governmental negligence even inspired a much-acclaimed Bollywood movie, Ek Doctor ki Maut (Death of a Doctor) by the veteran Tapan Sinha.
Now, after many test-tube baby births , the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technique is going the corporate way in the country. To organise the booming business, an Indian-American entrepreneur, Suresh Soni, plans to invest around Rs 700 crore on test-tube baby-making, beginning at 25 centres across 10 cities in India and the West Asia in the first phase by 2013.
Soni, Chairman of the Bangalore-based Nova Medical Centres, told
Pulse Hospital has been treating 1,200 women every year through the IVF technique at a success rate of 35 per cent, to help couples who cannot have children and make them parents at an affordable cost. The IVF clinic chain would be collectively owned by doctors.
Nova Medical Centre, the flagship company set up two years ago, will now set up the Nova Pulse IVF Clinics chain, for setting up facilities across 20 other places in the next two years, with the aim to handle one lakh cases annually by 2013.
In the tie-up, Dr Pravin Patel and Dr Manish Banker, owners of Pulse Hospital, will also hold a 5 per cent stake in each of the IVF clinics to be set up under the Nova Pulse brand, he said.
As against a 100-bed hospital costing Rs 200 crore, an IVF clinic would be set up with an investment of nearly Rs 10-12 crore. Compared to a minimum seven years of break-even for a hospital, a clinic would turn around only in six to eight months, he said, adding that the patient would also get the IVF clinic facility cheaper by 25 per cent. Currently, it ranges between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1.25 lakh a case.
Soni, who is also the Managing Director of the US-based GTI Capital Group LLC, said due to lack of adequate facilities in the unorganized healthcare sector, only 65,000 “cycles” are reported in India annually, although the potential is 15 lakh an annum in the country where an estimated two crore men and women are reported to be turning infertile each year due to lifestyle diseases.
Dr Banker said as against Israel's 3,263 women undergoing the IVF technique each year, only nine Indian women adopted this technique to conceive a baby.