INDIA: Indian Medical Travel Association urges government to modify visa for medical tourism

The Indian Medical Travel Association (IMTA) has asked the government to urgently modify the medical visa as it is hindering the growth of medical tourism.

The majority of foreigners going to India for medical treatment have been applying for a normal tourist visa and not opting for the specialist medical visa (M Visa), as under the latter it is mandatory for them to register individually with a local FRRO office within 14 days of arrival in India. This is an avoidable inconvenience imposed by the M Visa, particularly if patients are unable to leave the hospital once their treatment starts, to go and physically register at the FRRO.They must do this in person, they cannot do it by telephone, fax or email; which to many in the 21st century is just outrageously old-fashioned. Unfortunately, Indian bureaucracy is slow, cumbersome and paper based.

Patients who go on an M Visa have to seek the Indian hospital’s help to actually go to a local FRRO office, even if it is many miles away, and comply with the procedures. This in turn puts an avoidable strain on the hospital’s resources. So most agencies and hospitals have been advising potential patients to not apply for M visa and simply have a normal tourist visa that has no such requirements. IMTA argues that this has defeated the very purpose and the good intentions with which the government of India introduced the medical visa scheme.

The volume of foreign patient arrivals at Indian hospitals is growing at a healthy pace and medical tourism can benefit from its fast expanding private healthcare infrastructure. Indian doctors and professionals are skilful and many hospitals have state of the art technology and software; which makes it even more annoying that they are hampered by a cumbersome unworkable system based in the previous century.

Pradeep Thukral of the Indian Medical Travel Association says, “IMTA has apprised the relevant ministries of the Indian Government of the issues with medical visa and we have requested them to modify the process to make it an enabler for the growth of medical value travel to India.? An early action to address the issues with the medical visa would surely enhance the volume of international patients coming to India, it will also help to track the numbers of medical tourists arrival to India more accurately.” IMTA has made previous representations that have been ignored. Some hospitals suggest that the organisation has taken too long to act and a weak polite request will get nowhere unless they spell out how many medical tourists are being lost.

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