A leader in medical tourism

After living with pain for nearly 15 years, Russell Cole, 62, travelled from California to Mumbai last November to have three joints operated — knees and right hip — at the L H Hiranandani Hospital. Cole, who suffered from severe arthritis, paid Rs 6 lakh for the surgeries that would have cost him over Rs 25 lakh in the States.
Three weeks later, he was back on his feet and on the way home. “I would definitely recommend India to my friends who have been putting off orthopaedic surgeries for years because they can’t afford it,” Cole said.
George Marshal, a retired policeman, underwent an angiography in the UK. But when he was put on an eight-month waiting list for surgery, Marshal decided to get his operation done at Wockhardt Hospital, Bangalore. The operation was conducted last year and he is doing well.
In 2005, an estimated 1,75,000 patients travelled to India for medical care. Thailand and Singapore are other popular medical tourism haunts.
“That number is growing by 30-35 per cent every year,” says Vishal Bali, CEO, Wockhardt Group of Hospitals. Wockhardt gets roughly 900 overseas patients every year at its Mumbai and Bangalore facilities.
Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai, in that order, are the major hubs for standard surgical procedures, comprising about 70 per cent of the total medical tourism revenue. South India, Kerala in particular, gets top billing among those looking for alternative therapies, such as Ayurveda, that make up the rest of the revenue pie.
From an excruciatingly long wait for diagnostic and surgical procedures in some countries to skyrocketing medical costs elsewhere, the reasons why India is attracting overseas patients in the thousands are many.
Read more about this News