Indian Medical Tourism Sending Infections into United States: U.S. Health Official

A top health official in the United States administration told the U.S. Congress recently that medical tourism in India has been bringing infections into the United States.

India has one of the fastest growing medical tourism industries in the world. By 2020, it is expected to grow up to $9 billion, Rita Teaotia, Secretary, Indian Ministry of Commerce had said in October 2017, IANS reported. Currently, it is worth $3 billion.

“We have a problem in India. We have been getting infections, particularly carbapenem-resistant enterobacteria, ACA and others, through people who go there, for example, on medical tourism and then come back to our hospitals. We now have problems with things that have originated elsewhere,” Dr Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, United States, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing recently, as per PTI.

Fauci replied to a question posed at the Congressional hearing on Biodefense and Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases held by the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies in Washington.

“So, we feel we have the responsibility to help them over there. Anytime you have a resistant microbe that emerges in another country, inevitably it will come to the United States,” Fauci added .

In an incident in January 2017, an American woman had died of a “nightmare” drug-resistant carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a multidrug-resistant organism, after an India visit. The woman had been living in India for two years and was hospitalized at least four times for a right femur fracture and a subsequent hip fracture, as per PTI.

“We feel comfortable saying that she most likely obtained the bug in India,” Lei Chen, senior epidemiologist with the Washoe County Health District in the United States had been quoted as saying by PTI.

India is known for its superbugs that are drug-resistant. A study in July 2017 also revealed that it is the largest user of an antibiotic called carbapenems meant only as a “last resort drug” for fatal multi-drug resistant bacteria.

“The trends are unmistakable—in no other country do we see such widespread and uncontrolled access to these life-saving drugs,” said Ramanan Laxminarayanan, a health economist and vice-president of research at the Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi, and a co-author of the study, published in Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

“Anti-microbial resistance is an integral part of what we call biodefence against emerging infections, because we do consider an antibiotic-resistant bacteria as an emerging infectious disease,” Fauci explained.

Due to the increase in sales of the “last resort” antibiotics, the Indian government has introduced new rules. Retail chemists can no longer sell certain classes of antibiotics without prescriptions.