India Medical Tourism: Pakistanis Spend the Most Per Patient
As Indian medical visas granted to Pakistani patients regularly make headlines in India, it is hard not to conclude that it's all part of a PR campaign by the Hindu Nationalist Modi government in India. What is often left out of the media stories is the minor detail that Pakistanis pay more to use services of for-profit Indian hospitals than do people of other nationalities for such "humanitarian gestures". Pakistan is an important and lucrative source of medical tourism dollars in India . The kind of facilities Pakistanis pay to use in India are not accessible to poor Indian masses who must rely on India's decrepit public health system. A 2017 report by Indian ministry of commerce and industry says an average Pakistani spends Rs 187,000 on treatment in India. Those from Bangladesh spend Rs 134,000 on an average, followed by those from Commonwealth countries (Rs 125,000), Russia (Rs 104,000) and Iraq (Rs 98,554). Times of India quoted Manish Chandra of V