In the last 20 years, many more people than ever before have left their countries with the primary purpose to receive medical treatment. The neoliberal economy gave way to the commercialisation and marketisation of healthcare that inevitably results in a hike of medical travellers across borders.
Nations across the globe have been discovering healthcare as a profitable industry and are competing internationally to attract patients across national boundaries.
According to Transparency Market Research, a global market intelligence company which provides quantitative forecasting and trend analysis recently published a report which suggests in 2016; the global medical tourism market was valued at around US$46.46 bn, it is anticipated to witness a remarkable growth to around US$160.8 bn by the end of 2025.
In India, the tourism ministry along with the corporate super speciality hospitals and medical travel facilitating agencies are actively promoting to become a medical value travel destination.
In Asia, India is among the top four medical tourism hubs today, attracting patients from all over the world. The reasons for India being one of the top destinations for Medical Tourism is internally certified hospitals, the expertise of doctors and trained staff. The availability of quality services at cheaper rates and ever-growing facilitating agencies made the travel and stay for patients and accompanying people much more comfortable. Further, international flight connectivity and Internet-based communication made the whole phenomenon a success.
Patients from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal prefer India for their medical treatment. Further, patients from conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan and central Asian countries which were earlier part of the Soviet Union and other countries from Africa such as Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya have a preference for India.
Earlier most of the medical tourist data were estimate or guesstimate, but now the Indian government is capturing the medical visas issued from the respective embassies. This gives a fair number of patients who travelled to India in 2017, and if the estimates are not wrong, it will be crossing a million marks excluding the attendants.
Further, the Indian government has taken a lot of initiatives in this regard for example in 2016 they introduced a National Medical and Wellness Tourism Promotion Board. This board works under the Ministry of Tourism and starting formulating specific policies like providing NABH accreditation (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers) for medical travel companies and accreditation of wellness centre by NABH and AYUSH and other initiatives regarding patient mobility across borders.
Under the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) along with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) created ‘Advantage Health Care India’ on medical value travel. In the past three years, this initiative has invited around 2000 foreign delegates; it benefits to showcase exclusive medical services and expertise and promote India as a Premier Global Healthcare Destination. This effort helped to create opportunities for healthcare collaborations between the participating countries.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and PHD Chamber of Commerce has taken Indian Health Care abroad by organising health promotion sessions. SEPC is taking the initiative in doing shows in Ethiopia, Namibia, Gambia and other countries to promote health promotion and medical tourism by creating a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) with the assistance of medical tourism agencies representatives.
As per the government report coordinated with the YES bank on corporate hospitals, it was suggested that in 2017-18 financial year India should be doing about 3.4 billion US $ of medical travel which includes the wellness industry as well, this value is supposed to grow by 2.5 times by 2020.
It is interesting to find that, earlier the medical tourists were mainly coming for orthopaedic and cardiac problems, now interestingly the patients are coming for the treatment of cancer, diabetes, neurological disorders, skin diseases and weight management. While clinical medicine has been and remains the main attraction for medical patients travelling across the boundaries, researches show people are increasingly visiting India, seeking cure and care in alternative medicine.
In the recent past number of visitors asking for wellness therapy have increased but only a few actively demanded Ayurveda treatment from medical travel agencies. It was reported that visitors prefer to take Ayurveda services offered in tourist packages as it is well sold by travel agencies.
Ayurveda has always been promoted as wellness treatment by medical travel facilitating agencies whereas it can treat severe and rare diseases which haven’t found an answer in the best of the biomedical healthcare systems. If we even contemplate that promotion is being made by facilitating agencies supporting Ayurveda treatment for severe ailments like Cerebral Palsy, Autism, and Slip Disc etc. but when it comes to believing, unlike allopathy not many facts are available on the internet to prove that it is a research and fact-based treatment.
The profit of commercialisation of healthcare industry should not be concentrated in few hands, operating private multi-speciality hospitals pushing aggressively for medical treatment; it should equally focus on treatment indigenous to India which will certainly help to generate income and employment for the local community.
Singapore was declared as the sixth-best healthcare system in the world by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000 and is a famous spot for medical tourists over the last few decades. Over these years, the influx of people and an increase in life expectancy increases the population base; it has caused an enormous strain in its healthcare system. Singapore has a limited number of hospitals, and it was likely that more beds in the public hospital would be needed to cater to their citizens. Thus, now they do not actively promote medical travel to happen in their country.
Will does India learn from Singapore on prioritising the healthcare needs of their citizens? Should the government stop diverting the public land and resources to the private players for building a corporate hospital that caters the need of specific class?
Left behind in the stir of these tertiary healthcare institutions of excellence are a native population, 70% of them still lives in the rural area and faced issues with essential primary health care, where cultural, social and economic inequities are widening regarding access, affordability and quality of healthcare.
In the country more than three-fourths of spending on health is through Out of Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) and has less than one government allopathic doctor for every 10,000 population with one bed for every 1833 people. This situation is exacerbated by actively promoting medical tourism, as the government is continually diverting the resources and decreasing public health funding while continuing in patterns of health care system commercialisation.
