Medical Tourism
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• Patients all over the globe are becoming conscious of the qualitative and financial benefits of traveling to various healthcare providers in India. The reasons of patients may vary from long waiting hours to non-availability of treatments in poor countries.
• Every year millions of Arabs travel internationally for medical treatment in various countries and more than 300 corporate and health insurance companies in the region have funds dedicated to international medical travel
• Some destination countries such as India and Thailand have actively promoted medical tourism. This is because it can bring about benefits including increases in revenue, foreign exchange reserves and tourism
• India offers world-class health care that costs substantially less than that in developed countries, using the same technology delivered by competent specialists who attain similar success rates.
• In India ‘medical tourism’ is growing at the rate of 30% a year and is expected to generate revenues of Rs.100 billion by 2012
• The Marketing Development Assistance Scheme (MDA), administered by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, would provide financial support to approved medical tourism service providers
• Seeing the huge potential in the sector, the (Indian) government has also started issuing M (medical) visa to the medical patients, and MX visas to the spouse accompanying him, which are valid for a year. 200,000 medical tourists visited India last year, and the figure will grow by 50% this year
• Schedule commercial airlines like Lufthansa now carry patients in special
  compartments called Patient Transport Compartments (PTC). These are mobile
  transport units on-board Boeing 747 aircrafts, that include a stretcher, seats for doctors and medical flight assistant, medical equipment, drugs, oxygen system and material for medical treatment. This has revolutionized aeromedical transport on long-haul flights
• The Indian hospitals industry is facing acute shortage of trained personnel, ranging from doctors, nurses, technicians and even healthcare administrators. This paves the way for new players to establish training & education centres to provide trained healthcare personnel. The emergence of private hospitals is likely to change the state of healthcare in India. Additionally, technological innovations in service delivery, increased affordability, improved service quality and government policy initiatives are other factors expected
  to improve the sector..