Global Health Watch: In India, medical tourism stays close to home

International medical tourism in India tends to garner the headlines -- it’s a $2-billion industry that’s growing by 30% annually -- but the Indian government estimates that it’s dwarfed by its domestic cousin.

A recent tourism survey found that Indians make an estimated 126 million trips annually to meet health and medical needs within their own country, spending $5.2 billion on such trips.

Foreigners may come to India to save money on medical treatment, but trips for locals are expensive, with health and medical traveling reportedly costing four times as much for Indians as social or recreational trips.

Learn the forces behind medical tourism in the story “Ticket to treatment.”

The expenses include travel, accommodation, services and purchased goods, but don’t include daily trips to hospitals or health centers, which are quite common in rural areas where a single health center often serves several villages.

The survey also highlights the disparity in urban and rural healthcare. While swanky hotel-like hospitals in cities vie for international and wealthy Indian clients, rural India often lacks even the most basic services. For those, people in the countryside often must travel to urban areas for even moderately serious health problems. The survey found that more than 86% of all medical trips were made by those living in villages, the ones presumably least able to afford it.

Although the government has devoted significant resources to healthcare, Indians are spending at least as much of their own money. The Indian government set aside $5.2 billion for health service programs in 2010-11, but the survey estimated that Indians were already spending more than that themselves by 2008-09.

The survey, titled Domestic Tourism in India 2008-09 by India’s National Sample Survey Organization and released in October 2010, is available after obtaining a login ID.