Over 2 Lakh Foreigners Visited India For Medical Care in 2016

More than 2 lakh foreigners availed medical facilities in India in 2016, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs. As many as 1,678 Pakistani citizens and 296 Americans were among the foreigners who visited India to seek medical care in 2016, it said.

A total of 99,799 Bangladeshi citizens were issued medical visas in 2016, making up the highest number from a country. Afghanistan nationals came second on this list, with 33,955 citizens getting medical visas, followed by people from Iraq (13,465), Oman (12,227), Uzbekistan (4,420), and Nigeria (4,359), PTI reported.

The statistics showed that 201,099 medical visas were issued in 2016 to nationals of 54 countries across the globe. This includes 370 people from the United Kingdom, 96 from Russia and 75 from Australia.

In 2012, the number of foreigners who came to India to avail medical treatment stood at 171,021. The number went up to 236,898. The corresponding figure was 184,298 in 2014, and round 1.90 lakh in 2015.

A lot of these medical visas were issued under the category of e-visa, PTI reported citing a home ministry official. Under the e-visa category, visitors are given travel documents before their arrival in India. “Services of e-visa involve completely online application for which no facilitation is required by any intermediary or agents etc.,” according to the Ministry of Home Affairs. People who are eligible under this are international travelers whose sole objective of visiting India is recreation, sight-seeing, casual visit to meet friends or relatives, short duration medical treatment or casual business visit.

One of the key reasons that makes India a major destination for people seeking medical facilities is that the country offers treatment, which is as good as that available in developed nations, at accredited facilities at a lower cost.

Medical tourism in India is around $3 billion and is estimated to grow to $7-8 billion by 2020.

“During the financial year 2015-16, medical or health tourism has been the largest contributor (70 per cent) to India’s total health services exports of dollar 890 million, followed by contract research 27 per cent,” according to the Export of Health Services survey conducted by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

The survey, which presented its findings in April 2017, added that in 2015-16, Bangladesh accounted for more than 35 per cent of the foreign patients and more than 50 per cent of the total revenue from medical tourism. This made it the largest contributor to medical and health tourism in India. Other countries reporting a significant number of patients travelling to India for medical services are Iraq, Maldives, Afghanistan and Nepal.

“By discipline, orthopedics accounted for the highest export earnings of around $82.3 million while ophthalmology attracted the maximum number of foreign patients— close to 38,500—during the survey period 2015-16,” the survey said.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj granted medical visas to three Pakistani nationals in one week in October 2017, including one-year-old Shireen Shiraz who required an open heart surgery, and Neelma Ghafar, a woman seeking kidney treatment.

As many as 483,000 people traveled outside from China for medical care in 2015, and the figures are estimated to cross 800,000 by 2020, according to Global Growth Market. A sizeable number of the patients going abroad from the country for treatment come to India.