B'deshi patient inflow hit amid strain in ties

At the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) along Kolkata's arterial Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, the dedicated reception desk meant for foreign patients is strangely quiet. It's been that way since September last year when a student revolt in Bangladesh culminated in a regime change.

- Ridhima Gupta, Rezaul H Laskar and Joydeep Thakur

That, and ensuing bad blood with New Delhi, has seen a sharp drop in the number of medical visas, issued to patients from the country visiting India for treatment, with Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai being preferred destinations.

Dr Devi Shetty, chairman and founder, Narayana Health that runs RTIICS said the number of patients from Bangladesh has dipped "drastically".

"It's not the rich Bangladeshis going out of their country for surgery, it's the working class who cannot afford the treatment in Bangladesh who generally come to India. That section of society is currently deprived. I hope they (the two countries) sit across, address this problem, and increase the number of medical visas for them," said Dr Shetty.

In recent years, Bangladesh has emerged among the top two source countries for so-called medical tourism with tens of thousands travelling to India for medical treatment, especially to the Northeast, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. In response to this trend, some hospitals in the Northeast and Kolkata expanded to meet the needs of Bangladeshi patients.

According to people familiar with the matter in government, in the case of Bangladesh, visas are only being issued for students enrolled in Indian institutions and people requiring emergency medical treatment. That effectively translates into a near-complete ban on medical visas.

"While India was issuing almost 1,000 visas every day in Dhaka alone, this number is down to about 500 a month now," one of the people cited above added.

"We are issuing visas in limited manner for medical, emergency purposes. Once the situation becomes normal, law-and-order is restored, then we will begin our full-fledged operations of visa," Randhir Jaiswal, official spokesperson of the of MEA, told the media while addressing a weekly briefing in August last.