Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
Bangladesh crisis: As patients wait, healthcare industry rethinks approach to medical travel
As the flow of people from Bangladesh coming to India for medical treatment, comes down to a trickle, patients continue to be medically evaluated, say hospital administrators, but the waitlist grows.
It’s been about six months since the Bangladesh crisis affected the travel of patients to India for treatment, among other things.
At any point, over 100 patients in Bangladesh have been medically evaluated and waitlisted, says Dr Santosh Shetty, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director with Mumbai’s Kokilaben Hospital. Not all those who need urgent treatment would be able to wait, he points out, as they seek treatment for cancer, neurological and orthopaedic issues, for example.
While the number of patients coming to hospitals in the western parts of the country may be small – Bangladesh accounts for the single largest group among them, he said. Patients from Bangladesh largely flock to hospitals in the East, South and North of the country, hospital representatives point out.
Bangladesh has its own healthcare institutions, but there are patients who are comfortable taking treatment in India, or seek advanced treatments here at affordable costs, a healthcare industry-insider said, unwilling to be named, given the politically sensitive nature of the issue. In strife-hit regions, medical treatment is often prioritized, and a similar consideration can be made to give medical visas to genuine, medically evaluated cases, they observed, keeping security concerns in mind.
Revisit medical travel
Medical travel is going to change over the next few years because of geo-political reasons, today it is Bangladesh, tomorrow it is someone else, says Vishal Bali, Executive Chairman, Asia Healthcare Holdings (AHH). Currency-fluctuations make it expensive for people to travel to another country for treatment; and countries too are keen to treat their patients at reputed local hospitals, rather than have capital fly out of the country when people travel for treatment, says Bali. India should revisit its medical tourism approach and look to attract underserved or waitlisted patients from developed countries, he added.
Manipal Hospitals’ Managing Director and Chief Executive Dilip Jose observed, that patients not being able to come to India for medical treatment is a humanitarian issue, rather than just one affecting revenues. Manipal Hospitals has a presence in Kolkata through its acquired and rebranded AMRI Hospitals and Medica Synergie.
“Derisking Bangladesh”
Industry-analysts point to hospitals-networks including Apollo Hospitals, Max Healthcare etc who have pointed to impact from the Bangladesh crisis. In its Q2 FY 2025 earnings call, Apollo management said, international patient revenue was 6 percent of its total revenue and the plan was to up it to 9 percent, besides “derisking Bangladesh”. Pointing to the dip in patient volumes in the South and East, another Apollo executive said, the overall volumes from Bangladesh was “down by 25% versus what it was historically.” Similarly, Max Healthcare management told analysts during their last earnings call that “Bangladesh used to be less than 1 percent of our total business.” The network has compensated for this, he said, through initiatives from other markets.
SHARE
Published on December 31, 2024
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.