Inside India's 'No-Frills' Hospitals, Where Heart Surgery Costs Just $800

In this picture taken on February 7, 2013 hospital staff work at one of the post-operative pediatrics observation and care units of the Narayana Hrudayalaya cardiac-care hospital in Bangalore. A group of Indian doctors believe they can cut the cost of heart surgery to an astonishing 800 USD at their "no thrills" low-cost hospital.

What if hospitals were run like a mix of Wal-Mart and a low-cost airline? The result might be something like the chain of "no-frills" Narayana Hrudayalaya clinics in southern India.

Using pre-fabricated buildings, stripping out air-conditioning and even training visitors to help with post-operative care, the group believes it can cut the cost of heart surgery to an astonishing 800 dollars.

"Today healthcare has got phenomenal services to offer. Almost every disease can be cured and if you can't cure patients, you can give them meaningful life," says company founder Devi Shetty, one of the world's most famous heart surgeons.

"But what percentage of the people of this planet can afford it? A hundred years after the first heart surgery, less than 10 percent of the world's population can," he told AFP from his office in hi-tech hub Bangalore.

Already famous for his "heart factory" in Bangalore, which does the highest number of cardiac operations in the world, the latest Narayana Hrudayalaya ("Temple of the Heart") projects are ultra low-cost facilities.

The first is a single-storey hospital in Mysore, two hours drive from Bangalore, which was built for about 400 million rupees (7.4 million dollars) in only 10 months and recently opened its doors.

Set amid palm trees and with five operating theatres for cardiac, brain and kidney procedures, Shetty boasts how it was built at a fraction of the cost of equivalents in the rich world.