Public private partnership must for development of medical toursim

Chennai: The private and public hospitals need to work together to promote India as the medical value travel destination. Releasing the Incredible India brochure on medical tourism, union minister for tourism and culture Ambika Soni said, there is also need to project India as the credible quality destination, where an international patient is assured that he is being given best quality treatment at competitive costs.

She also called upon the healthcare industry to standardise their processes and make its functioning more transparent and accountable.

According to Soni, India's healthcare sector has emerged as the largest in the service sector. Indians now spend over Rs100,000 crore a year on healthcare, and the sector contributes 6.2 per cent to the GDP. Experts project that by 2012, it will contribute 8 per cent to the GDP and employ 9 million people.

But one of the many challenges it faces is to provide good quality, affordable healthcare to all. The National Health Policy, framed in 2002, has the stated objective of "achieving acceptable standards of good health among general population". In order to achieve this, there is need to reduce inequalities, imbalances that exist between regions, cities and villages and different socio-economic groups.

The minister said that India has done exceptionally well in the last three years in the tourism sector, with overseas footfalls expanding at near 20 per cent average every year. By January this year, 3.3 million travellers had already visited India, spending close to $5 billion.

Domestic travel is also witnessing rapid growth. Some 368 million Indians are venturing out of their homes, based on rising incomes, lower aviation costs, and more leisure time. The industry is projected to attract a capital investment of $21 billion by 2014, up from about $10.2 billion estimated in 2004.

Equally significant is the impact this growth will have on employment. The travel and tourism industry already accounts for one of every nine job opportunities created in India, currently aggregating over 20 million employees. It is estimated that this industry generates more jobs per unit investment than any other sector, she added.

Addressing the gathering Dr.Anbumani Ramadoss, union minister for Health and Family Welfare said, southern states of India, especially, Kerala has developed health tourism as one of the products for the promotion of tourism in Kerala. He said most of the hotels / resorts are coming up with the spas and ayurveda centres as an integral part in Kerala.

With the available talent base of over five lakh doctors and seven lakh nursing professionals, India can provide medical and healthcare of international standard at comparatively low cost. These are well documented, with many surgical procedures being available at one-tenth the cost of those in developed countries. Also there is no waiting period for elective surgery, he added.

The tourism ministry along with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Indian Healthcare Federation has developed the Incredible India brochure that talks about the healthcare procedures and services offered in India.