Health care tonic for

the tourism sector


With world class doctors and hospitals, India is offering health care that is drawing medical tourists from all over the world

What is India News Service
3 May 2005

India is emerging as one of the world’s top destinations for medical tourism. What's called medical tourism – patients going to a different country for either urgent or elective medical procedures – is fast becoming a worldwide, multibillion-dollar industry.

The reasons patients travel for treatment vary. Many medical tourists from the United States are seeking treatment at a quarter or sometimes even a 10th of the cost at home. From Canada, it is often people who are frustrated by long waiting times. From Great Britain, the patient can't wait for treatment by the National Health Service but also can't afford to see a physician in private practice. For others, becoming a medical tourist is a chance to combine a tropical vacation with elective or plastic surgery.

And more patients are coming from poorer countries such as Bangladesh where treatment may not be available. Medical tourism is actually thousands of years old. In ancient Greece, pilgrims and patients came from all over the Mediterranean to the sanctuary of the healing god, Asklepios, at Epidaurus. In Roman Britain, patients took the waters at a shrine at Bath, a practice that continued for 2,000 years. From the 18th century wealthy Europeans travelled to spas from Germany to the Nile. In the 21st century, relatively low-cost jet travel has taken the industry beyond the wealthy and desperate.

Besides India, countries that actively promote medical tourism are Cuba, Costa Rica, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia and Thailand. Belgium, Poland and Singapore are now entering the field. South Africa specializes in medical safaris-visit the country for a safari, with a stopover for plastic surgery, a nose job and a chance to see lions and elephants.

India is considered the leading country promoting medical tourism-and now it is moving into a new area of "medical outsourcing," where subcontractors provide services to the overburdened medical care systems in western countries.

India's National Health Policy declares that treatment of foreign patients is legally an "export" and deemed "eligible for all fiscal incentives extended to export earnings." Government and private sector studies in India estimate that medical tourism could bring between $1 billion and $2 billion US into the country by 2012. The reports estimate that medical tourism to India is growing by 30 per cent a year.

India's top-rated education system is not only churning out computer programmers and engineers, but an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 doctors and nurses each year.

The largest of the estimated half-dozen medical corporations in India serving medical tourists is Apollo Hospital Enterprises, which treated an estimated 60,000 patients between 2001 and spring 2004. It is Apollo that is aggressively moving into medical outsourcing. Apollo already provides overnight computer services for U.S. insurance companies and hospitals as well as working with big pharmaceutical corporations with drug trials. Dr. Prathap C. Reddy, chairman of the company, began negotiations in the spring of 2004 with Britain's National Health Service to work as a subcontractor, to do operations and medical tests for patients at a fraction of the cost in Britain for either government or private care.

Apollo's business began to grow in the 1990s, with the deregulation of the Indian economy, which drastically cut the bureaucratic barriers to expansion and made it easier to import the most modern medical equipment. The first patients were Indian expatriates who returned home for treatment; major investment houses followed with money and then patients from Europe, the Middle East and Canada began to arrive. Apollo now has 37 hospitals, with about 7,000 beds. The company is in partnership in hospitals in Kuwait, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.

Western patients usually get a package deal that includes flights, transfers, hotels, treatment and often a post-operative vacation.

Apollo has also reacted to criticism by Indian politicians by expanding its services to India's millions of poor. It has set aside free beds for those who can't afford care, has set up a trust fund and is pioneering remote, satellite-linked telemedicine across India.

While, so far, India has attracted patients from Europe, the Middle East and Canada, Thailand has been the goal for Americans.

India initially attracted people who had left that country for the West; Thailand treated western expatriates across Southeast Asia. Many of them worked for western companies and had the advantage of flexible, worldwide medical insurance plans geared specifically at the expatriate and overseas corporate markets.

Health care and tourism have long been fuelling service sector growth in the country. The benefits from a synergy of the two sectors are too good to be ignored with the administration and corporate hospitals taking an initiative to woo foreigners.

Several steps were initiated by the government to tap the city’s potential for health tourism. A recent heritage health festival brought together scores of representatives to discuss marketing Hyderabad as a medical hub.

A number of resorts are being planned across the state to serve as rejuvenation centres for tourists coming for treatment, tourism secretary Chandana Khan said.

In addition, a delegation of tourism officials recently visited Dubai for hardselling the 'Greet and Treat' programme, under which the government has proposed a series of packages that includes treatment plus holiday resort and rejuvenation centres.

But to sustain this momentum it is important to put in place world class facilities. Hyderabad has about 10 large hospitals offering world class facilities for patients. The average cost of treatment here is just one-third of that in the Gulf or western countries.

Many international flights from the Gulf countries connect to Hyderabad. So the city gets sizeable patients from these countries. Over the years lots of families from here have settled in the Gulf and they prefer to come to Hyderabad for treatment since it is cheap and they also get a chance to meet their families and friends.

Besides, the government is also promoting various other forms of Indian medicine. A Kerala-based group has opened its branches at nine centres in Andhra Pradesh for Ayurvedic treatment. Hyderabad is already famous for its fish medicine. The other forms of traditional medicine practised in the state such as the bone-setting technique of Puttur and paralysis treatment at Chirala in Prakasam district are also being popularised by the tourism department.