Chennai: Not wanting to lose international visitors, when states like Tamil Nadu have good infrastructure, the Department of Commerce and Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) has launched a healthcare portal www.indiahealthcaretourism.com to serve as single source platform
providing comprehensive information to the medical travellers on the top healthcare institutions in the country in English, Arabic, Russian and French. India has emerged as a major medical tourism destination.
Though Tourism Ministry does not maintain any data regarding the growth of India’s medical tourism vis a vis other countries, according to the Ministry of Commerce the FICCI-IMS Knowledge Paper titled, ‘Medical Value travel in India: Enhancing value in MVT’, published in 2016, India is amongst the top 6 MVT (Medical Value Travel) destinations of the world which include Thailand, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Mexico (India ranked third in the world in 2015).
It has been decided to set up facilitation counters at the major airports of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bengaluru for tourists arriving on medical visas.
A National Medical and Wellness Tourism Board has been constituted to provide a dedicated institutional framework to take forward the cause of promotion of Medical and Wellness Tourism including Ayurveda and any other format of Indian system of medicine covered by Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH).
Medical and medical attendant visa has been introduced to ease the travel process of medical tourists. The e-tourist visa regime has been expanded to include medical visits as well. The Tourism Ministry has recognised medical and wellness tourism as niche tourism products for promotion.
The ministry offers financial support as marketing development assistance, for publicity, and for organising wellness and medical tourism promotion shows as well as workshop etc. to accredited medical and wellness tourism service providers and Chambers of Commerce.
