Eastern India to be recognised as health care hub

Kolkata, Jul 22: Tourism has always been the main thrust of the Indian government to earn more revenue, but now another major sector, medical tourism, is likely to bring in thousands of crores of rupees annually from the eastern region alone.

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has taken an initiative to make Kolkata a major tertiary health care hub.

According to a CII-McKinsey report, medical tourism can alone earn a revenue of Rs 5,000-10,000 crore by 2012.

In a meeting of CII here today, Kolkata Municipal Commissioner Alapan Bandopadhyay said health care sector is one of the largest industries in the world and the city has huge potential for developing this most promising business as there are end number of super speciality hospitals.

However,since 1990's the public health system has been collapsing and hence the government has shifted its focus to a selective and targeted programme-based healthcare policy,said Mr Bandopadhyay.

Addressing newspersons, CII Chairman for eastern region B L Raina said India spends 5.2 per cent of GDP in health care annually which has icreased to 6.5 to 8 per cent in recent years thus generating about eight million jobs by 2012.

A few developing countries are coming to India due to lack of basic medical amenities whereas some developed nations like the US and Canada are also making a move due to escalating medical costs and long pateint queue. Stressing on this medical tourism, he said India caters to the needs of these people for better treatment at extremely economical rates.

Citing the example of Baby Noor from Pakistan, who came to India for an open heart surgery and went back healthy and satisfied, Dr Naresh Trehan, CII, Chairman for National Committee on health care, said there was a great revolution in the health care sector and by 2020 the country would be one of the largest economies in this sector.

He also said the proposed project to convert the eastern region experienced a major boom in the number of super speciality hospitals along with other branches like ayurveda, homeopathy, yoga, siddha, kairali and reiki that has been able to attract a major number of patients worldwide.

He further added that the increasing number of hospitals would create ample job opportunities for the youths here.

UNI