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Archana Sharma – New Delhi
The union ministry of tourism has finalised new guidelines to promote medical and wellness tourism in India. This was announced by Parvez Dewan, secretary, ministry of tourism, Government of India during the release of the PHD-RNCOS Knowledge Study at the Medical and Wellness Summit, 2014 held recently in New Delhi. Speaking about the benefits of these guidelines, Dewan stated, “The scheme will provide assistance and market development opportunity by partly reimbursing expenses, undertaken by tour operators and market facilitators to promote medical tourism in India and overseas.” He further hinted that around Rs two lakh could be given to people to take part in international symposiums and trade fairs.
Talking about medical tourism, Anand Kumar, joint secretary, ministry of tourism, Government of India said, “In 2012, India hosted almost 1.66 lakh medical tourists from all over the world and has shown a 20 per cent annual growth rate. However, we need to support this by providing infrastructure and equipments to improve the quality of our offerings.” Kumar also advised on relaxing the visa regime and establishing a watchdog and a certification committee to set standards and ensure that they are being followed. Other suggestion included certifying hospitals for treatment, providing hospital facilities to places like Afghanistan, etc for missionary purposes, putting a rating system in place for spas and salons for standardisation, introducing initiatives for the wellness industry, etc.
Moreover, suggestions were also made on the promotion of alternate medicine. “People already know about Kerala, however, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are emerging as alternate healthcare centres. The herb based alternate healthcare has no adverse side-effects and thereby about 70 per cent of patients practice Ayurveda,” stated Nilanjan Sanyal, secretary, department of AYUSH adding that a mega Ayurveda conference will be hosted from November 6-9, 2014.
