India is set to take medical tourism seriously

Monday, August 29, 2022

As India observed the 75th year of its Independence, to unlock its doors to the world of medical tourism, the country is preparing itself with a fresh new slogan, ‘Heal in India’.

The term medical tourism is used to define the practices of travelling to foreign countries to look for healthcare services.

In the medical tourism genre, there has been a sea change in the last four decades, where for heart surgery or cancer treatment, people used to travel to the USA or Europe but in current day scenario, there is an increasing flow of patients from rich countries to all the developing ones.

For seeking treatment overseas, the main categories are cardiology, cosmetic surgery, orthopedic surgery, bariatric surgery, organ transplantation, fertility treatment, dentistry and diagnostics.

Every year, around 1.40 crore people for better medical treatment visit different countries. Before Covid-19 struck, in 2019, around 6.97 lakh persons visited India on a medical visa.

These numbers is hoped to increase rapidly as international travel opens up its doors. The pandemic in fact has created more pile ups worldwide for elective surgeries like joint replacement.

Different destinations for medical tourism have acquired specializations of sorts. For cosmetic surgery, Brazil is well-known, for dentistry, people generally fly to Mexico and Costa Rica, Malaysia for dental and cosmetic surgery, for health check-ups Indonesia is most preferred while for cosmetic and bariatric surgeries along with wellness tourism, Thailand comes first.

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