Devi Prasad Shetty

Devi Prasad Devi Prasad is an Indian Director turned Actor who >> Read More... Shetty was born on 8th May 1953 in Mangaluru, Karnataka. He is a heart surgeon, philanthropist and entrepreneur. In the medical field, Devi Prasad is considered as a living legend and he has performed over 20000 heart surgeries, among which 4000 have been pediatric. Devi Prasad comes from humble beginnings, he was one of his nine brothers and sisters in a middle-class family and he grew up in a rural area. It was in 8th standard when Devi Prasad decided to pursue the medical field, and specifically becoming a doctor when he read about a South African surgeon, by the name of Dr. Christian Barnard who had at that time performed heart surgery. He made that his passion and followed his dreams.

Soon, in 1973 Devi Prasad entered the University of Mysore, and in 1978 came out, graduating as a doctor after an extremely successful time in his university where he excelled. Right after he graduated, he registered himself with Karnataka Medical Council, working there for around two years, and then he went back to the University of Mysore to complete his master's degree, and in 1982 he completed his post-graduation. Soon after, he migrated to the UK and received a fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons. In the UK, Devi Prasad trained as a cardio thoracic surgeon, and he also worked in the Guys Hospital, London from 1983 to 1989. In 1989, he returned to India and started working in the BM Birla Hospital, where he became the first Indian surgeon ever to perform the neonatal heart surgery successfully on a nine-year-old boy named Ronnie. In Kolkata, at the time when Mother Teresa had her heart attack, it was he who successfully operated her and then for quite a while Devi Prasad served as her personal physician. Soon after his stint in Kolkata, Devi moved to Bangalore, which became his permanent home. He founded Narayana Hrudalaya, a high-tech, multi-specialty hospital with some of the most utmost technological advancements and one of it’s kind at the time in 2001. Since then, Devi Prasad has been awarded numerous awards for his contributions in the field of healthcare, awards like Padmashree, Padma Bhushan, Social Entrepreneurship award, Economist award, Karnataka Ratna award, honorary degrees from IIT Madras, University of Minnesota and many more. He currently also sits as an active member of the European Association for Cardio.