India poised to become global destination for quality healthcare

Source: Himanshu Vatsa

India is emerging as a major global destination for healthcare and the government is making all out efforts to improve the quality of service and ease visa process for foreigners visiting the country for medical care. According to Rita Teaotia, Secretary, Department of Commerce, the government is working on various areas to make the country a global healthcare destination. One of the key areas of concern is “making visa much more easy to obtain, much more flexible in terms of the administration”, she said adding, “our focus is now on the human resources and the quality”. “We need to look at forensic standard; we need to look at accreditation so that the confidence in the Indian healthcare system and uniformity of treatment across the system can be ensured,” Teaotia said at an international summit on Advantage Healthcare India 2015. Delegates from 65 countries are participating in the international summit on medical value travel being organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The Commerce Secretary said that India’s healthcare market which is currently valued at $79 billion is estimated to reach up to $160 billion by 2017. She said India is a “great location” for healthcare “because this is a place where the entire gamut of the healthcare sector finds a place”. While admitting that countries like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Hungary are market leaders of the sector, she said “India is right up there and it’s going ahead in terms of where its performance is, where its market share is.” Vinod Zutshi, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, who was also preset at the event, said that the medical value travel industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of tourism industry with a projected average growth rate of 18% till 2019. He said that India, which hosts 1.27 million medical tourists, needs aggressive marketing strategy to make the country as a brand destination. “There is also a need to adopt the strategy of aggressively marketing brand destination India, not only in Asia and SAARC countries, but also in Africa, America and Europe. The medical value stakeholders in India need to consolidate their efforts and strategies on how to leverage the available opportunities,” he said. The tourism secretary also said that the proposed tourism policy 2015 envisages policy making under the national tourism authority and give emphasis on medical and wellness tourism in the country. The ministry of tourism has also constituted a national medical and wellness tourism promotion board which will work with all stakeholders to plan a clear roadmap to work upon. “E-tourist visa facility has been extended to 130 countries and we have the intention to extending it up to 150 countries in the near future,” Zutshi added.