WP,pg1: Surgeries, Side Trips for 'Medical Tourists'(health care in India)

[DeepModem Mom]

Surgeries, Side Trips for 'Medical Tourists'
Affordable Care at India's Private Hospitals Draws Growing Number of Foreigners

By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 21, 2004; Page A01


NEW DELHI -- Three months ago, Howard Staab learned that he suffered from a life-threatening heart condition and would have to undergo surgery at a cost of up to $200,000 -- an impossible sum for the 53-year-old carpenter from Durham, N.C., who has no health insurance.

So he outsourced the job to India.

Taking his cue from cost-cutting U.S. businesses, Staab last month flew about 7,500 miles to the Indian capital, where doctors at the Escorts Heart Institute & Research Centre -- a sleek aluminum-colored building across the street from a bicycle-rickshaw stand -- replaced his balky heart valve with one harvested from a pig. Total bill: about $10,000, including round-trip airfare and a planned side trip to the Taj Mahal....

***

Staab is one of a growing number of people known as "medical tourists" who are traveling to India in search of First World health care at Third World prices. Last year, an estimated 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical procedures, and the number is increasing at the rate of about 15 percent a year, according to Zakariah Ahmed, a health care specialist at the Confederation of Indian Industries....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49743-2004Oct20.html

[Moderator]

1. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=920558



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