Hyderabad, March 18 (IANS) India’s largest private healthcare provider Apollo Hospitals plans to set up 32 new hospitals in the country over the next two years.
While 11 new hospitals will come up in the next fiscal year, 20 more centres will open in 2011-12, Apollo chairman Prathap C. Reddy told reporters here Thursday.

The chain, which plans to add 1,500 beds in the next fiscal, will open its 52nd hospital in April this year with the inauguration of the new facility in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad.

“Today, we have bed strength of 8,800; and we will soon cross 9,000,” Reddy said. During 2009-10, the group added 2,000 beds with an investment of Rs.2,000 crore.

Reddy announced launch of three new super-speciality cancer hospitals. The first such hospital with Novalis TX, the latest technology in treatment of cancer, will be opened here on March 20. A similar facility in Kolkata will be inaugurated on March 23. Another super speciality cancer hospital is coming up in Delhi.

This will take to four the number of super speciality cancer hospitals of Apollo. It already has a facility in Chennai with Cyberknife technology.

The 100-bed super speciality cancer hospital in Hyderabad has come up with an investment of Rs.100 crore. The facility in Kolkata has been built at a cost of Rs.80 crore while a similar investment would be made for the hospital in Delhi.

Prathap Reddy said Apollo had decided not make any investment in overseas expansion till July in view of the prevailing market conditions.

“Earlier, I was jumping on to overseas expansion. I was about to buy a chain of hospitals in the UK. By doing so, I would have put a thread around my neck,” he said.

He clarified that there would be no overseas projects in addition to the four projects it was commissioning with an option to buy them. These include two projects in Nigeria and a heart hospital each in Shanghai and Vienna.

On the reports that Apollo was planning to buy Coimbatore-based Kovai Medical Centre & Hospital, he said no such proposal has come to the management from the finance division. “The project division sends the proposal to finance division if there is a good opportunity and it is the finance division which says yes and send the same to management.”

The Apollo chairman said though all available funds were tied up for new projects, there would be no dearth of funds if there were good opportunities.