India emerging as a cheap rate medical tourism hub

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• published: 21 Jul 2015
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New Delhi - Recent 1. Heart patient Howard Staab and his partner Maggi Grace talking to a reporter 2. Low angle shot of Howard and Maggi 3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Howard Staab, heart patient: "It was excellent. I could not find this love and care back in the States. It was so good. Every time, I every time something happened, there were doctors right there just... (clicks his fingers) just as fast as you can hope for. So, I'm very glad I came here." 4. SOUNDBITE: (English) Maggi Grace, Howard's partner: "It was really a cost issue at the beginning and there was absolutely no way for us to pay what they were asking, which was estimated at 200,000 (US) dollars. Even if we paid half up front like they asked and paid for the rest of your life, you know." New Delhi - Recent 5. Patients seated for pre-discharge check-up 6. Doctor examining heart patient John Edwards 7. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Edwards, heart patient: "They have used an artery which is a 100 per cent okay and they have given me a life expectancy on the heart of about 20-25 years. So, I am not complaining about that. So, if London, if the Whittington hospital in London missed the diagnosis completely, got it hundred per cent wrong, I certainly was not going back to them for the operation, they might get that 100 per cent wrong too." 8. Wide of robotic heart surgery in progress 9. Close of robotic arms moving 10. Surgeon sitting at the console 11. Monitor showing beating heart and the procedure 12. Monitor showing other parameters New Delhi - Recent 13. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr Anupam Sibal, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital: "The fact that Indian medical expertise is second to none has been well-known for years because Indians head medical institutions in the West. What was lacking perhaps was the infrastructure and the support services, but now we have several hospitals in India where the technology is available, the systems are in place, the protocols exist and with that, when you have top medical expertise, you can actually deliver quality care and care which is comparable to the best in the West. And this... and the cost which is one-fifth or one-tenth of the West, so we have all the ingredients it takes to get patients from overseas to come here." Mumbai - Recent 14. Nurse talking to patient New Delhi - Recent 15. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr Naresh Trehan, President, Indian Healthcare Federation: "We are wanting the institutions to have, accept a common fee and second, in addition to that, we want them to be signatories to the code of ethics which we have developed." Mumbai - Recent 16. Various of patient getting treatment through Leksell Gamma Knife, a hi-tech tool used for 'bloodless' non-invasive brain surgery 17. SOUNDBITE: (English) Anupam Verma, Vice President, Medical Tourism Council of Maharashtra state: "We have categorised this kind of tourist inflow into three basic areas. One comes in for basic health screening wherein the main reason of coming into India is tourism, where they want to see Taj Mahal and they also want to get a health check-up done in India. So, that is the health screening market. The second market is for stand-alone procedures which are not very much covered by insurance abroad, that is like stand-alone units like dental and the cosmetic surgery and cosmetology, etc. The third and the most important is higher end tertiary care planned treatments like open heart surgeries, joint replacements, the arthroscopies, the neurosurgeries, heart ailments." 18. Wide of admissions counter at hospital 19. Various of lobby and cafeteria STORYLINE: Four months ago, 53-year-old American Howard Staab discovered the mitral valve in his heart was leaking and needed immediate replacement. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/e125598156f5d4ed65e028a1735fc53f Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork