Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian
Met 2023-02-13 11:00 at Taj Connemara, Binny Road, Anna Salai, Chennai, Chennai, India.He and I have been emailing regularly for 13 years! His daughter finished medical school and she's become a Rhodes Scholar this year - doing her PhD at Oxford. Dr. Mani is his identity as a writer online. Dr. Sivasubramanian is his identity as a heart surgeon. He specialized in pediatric heart surgery because it was challenging and not many others were doing it in India. The biggest problem in India with heart surgery for kids isn’t the facilities or patient load, but that 99% of the patients can’t afford the cost of treatment. So even though he’s a surgeon, he found the best solution is to support Dr. Devi Shetty in Bangalore, who is doing the most affordable treatments because he’s taken a radical new approach, lowering costs by 80%. Trains nurse-assistants to do most of the non-complicated mechanical steps needed, instead of only hiring nurses with ten years’ training. Patients who can afford full price go into the corporate suite and he uses those profits to subsidize the patients who can’t afford it. Keeps the profit margin at 5% instead of maximum. Dr. Mani said that when his ebooks are sold to fund operations, response rate sales went from 2% to 18%. People aren’t reading the book as much as supporting the cause. Most medical doctors are too busy for their families. With specialists, it gets worse. And even more so in his field of paediatric heart surgery. And yet, Mani spent so much time with his daughter that she said when she grows up she wants to be a pediatric heart surgeon - since they clearly have so much free time! That’s his biggest compliment in life.