After the ban on e-cigarettes, the government should ban smoking "totally", noted cardiologist Prathap Chandra Reddy said 25th September.

Reddy, the chairman of the Apollo Hospitals chain, said non-communicable diseases, including heart ailments, obesity, sleeplessness and cancer are the biggest threat to healthcare that the nation faces today. The comments come a week after government banned e- cigarettes citing health risks, but chose to allow tobacco use with the present restrictions as it is a high revenue source. It can be noted that government, through an indirect holding, is the single largest shareholder in ITC, the country's largest tobacco maker, owning close to 10 percent which is worth thousands of crores.

"Instead of spending on treating heart diseases, government should ban smoking," Reddy told reporters, saying such move will lead to a huge reduction on public spending on a many diseases, including fatal ones hitting heart and lungs. Welcoming ban on e-cigarettes, he said smoking those alters certain body cells which creates problems and reiterated that going beyond that the government should ban all sorts of smoking "totally". The hospital group also went public with its concerns over the low pricing offered to service providers under the Ayushman Bharat scheme, while maintaining that it is a very good scheme conceptually.

"Cost that the government has fixed is ridiculous but we are not refusing patients," he said, adding Niti Aayog is meeting private doctors on October 23, where the issue of pricing will come up. Group managing director Suneeta Reddy said the pricing offered for surgical interventions is so low and needs a revision, but added the group is committed to keep 5 percent of admissions in small town hospitals under the scheme. She also said the pricing formula given by a certain states is much better.

He said government also needs to increase the spend on healthcare to 4 percent of GDP, which along with an outgo of 5-8 percent of GDP by corporates should ensure that every citizen gets good healthcare service.