Chennai: On May 23, 2016, Dr K M Cherian of Chennai-based Frontier Mediville signed an MoU with SPUTNIK, Russian Federation for the manufacture of a mechanical artificial heart. It is to be noted that SPUTNIK, the Russian organization, was responsible for launching the 1st Space Shuttle on Oct 1957, which took the Americans by surprise and now the company has further excited the World by creating mechanical artificial hearts.

The MoU was signed with Mr Sergey Sannikov in the presence of Padma Bhushan Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, Father of Brahmos Missiles. According to the memorandum, it will be possible to produce the mechanical artificial heart within the cost of INR 30 lakhs, which will be very cheap and affordable to many in the world compared to the others.

At the press briefing, Dr Cherian, said, "There are more than one lakh patients who had artificial hearts last year in North America alone. The latest artificial heart cost Rs 90.5 lakhs including implantation and it goes beyond 1.25 crores. It is essential for the hospital to have a standby heart in case if the implanted one fails. So the actual cost for the hospital /patient is around 2.5 crores. As you can imagine how many of our 1.2 billion population can afford it? The artificial hearts are made in US by Heart Mate, Thoratec Corporation, California, USA and in Germany by Berlin Heart GmbH. Both are equally effective but expensive."

SPUTNIK is very keen to manufacture this mechanical artificial heart in Mediville as the company believes that Mediville has the entire infrastructure, especially a large facility for pre clinical studies which are going on as per CPCSEA approval projects which have approved projects by CPCSEA. Thus with the technology available as well as the facilities, Russians believe that these artificial hearts could be made very cheap and will be available for supply to all over the world.

The Memorandum is for a Joint Venture, and if it materializes, India will be the 1st Asian country and 3rd country in the world to produce its own artificial heart and of course the standing of Tamil Nadu as a MECCA in the field of Medical Care will be enhanced.