India surprised to find Bangladeshis coming for simple pathological tests

Many Bangladeshis are coming to India for “routine pathological tests”, a finding that surprises Indian businesses.

This was found in a ‘White Paper’ the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) released on Monday at the opening of the first-ever international summit on medical value travel in New Delhi.

Bangladesh’s health sector has come a long way with private sector investments, despite low government spending.

International groups like India’s Apollo and Malaysia’s KPJ have set up facilities in Dhaka.

But this Indian finding points to a serious lack of confidence among the people in the health care system.

Vice-Chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Prof Kamrul Hassan Khan sees no reason for Bangladeshis to go to India for routine medical tests.

“I would say it’s information gap. They don’t know what we are doing or what we can offer. We could not spread the information properly,” Prof Khan, a pathologist, told bdnews24.com.

“Agencies working for foreign hospitals also play a role in luring patients away to their hospitals,” he said on the sidelines of the summit.

The three-day meet drew 520 participants from 65 countries, mostly of Asia, Africa, the Middle-East and the CIS, the last being a grouping of former Soviet republics

The FICCI along with the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry is hosting this summit to promote India as a “premier global healthcare destination”.

The objective is a unique amalgamation of ‘5Ts’—talent, tradition, technology, tourism and trade—as India is emerging as a preferred healthcare destination for patients across the globe for some of its world-class facilities.

The ‘state-of-the-art’ treatment costs much less than it does in the rival regional establishments of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis are believed to be among patients going to India for treatment, though there is no official statistics on this.

The FICCI ‘White Paper’, however, said an estimated 500 patients come to India from Bangladesh daily for treatment.

“Surprisingly many Bangladeshis come to India for routine pathological tests and not complicated procedures,” it noted.

Nine out of 10 head for private hospitals in Kolkata, while the rest go to south India, mainly to the Christian Medical College in Vellore, Tamil Nadu.

According to their analysis, Bangladeshis prefer coming to India because of easy accessibility by road, “even for people without the appropriate documents”.

Until the early 2000s, there were two main private hospitals in Kolkata –Ruby General Hospital and Peerless General Hospital – that served Bangladeshi patients.

Over the last 10 years, at least four others have entered the field and more are in the pipeline, “all eyeing the ever-expanding business from people across the border”.

It said Peerless Hospital was exploring a local tie-up to open clinics in Chittagong, Rajshahi and Dhaka.

People travelling from one country to another for treatment contribute to global business. Last year, it was a $43 billion market globally, according to the FICCI.

India, which attracted medical tourists only from its neighbouring countries once, is now aiming to get closer to earnings of about $4 billion from medical tourism by the end of this year.

The FICCI says patients from the US, UK and other developed nations have started making “a beeline” to India for treatment.

“The reason is simple, extremely low cost healthcare services compared to their country of residence,” according to its report.

An analysis indicates that South East Asia and Africa account for the highest number of patient arrivals followed by the CIS, and the Middle East.

Hospital CEOs, however, raised some areas of concerns including the issue of accreditation at the opening of the summit.