New national policy on medical tourism

A new medical tourism policy is being put in place in India, in an attempt to regulate and promote the countries medical and wellness facilities.
The National Medical and Wellness Tourism Promotion Board, working with the Ministry of tourism, will launch a medical tourism policy for India. The launch is in late July 2017.

The government wants medical tourism hospitals to register with the government so they can be promoted on a new website.

To curb any unscrupulous medical travel agents in India’s medical and wellness travel sector, the Ministry of Tourism is seeking to bring in compulsory registration for medical travel agents. Unless they are accredited they will not be allowed to advertise on official tourism or medical tourism websites.

At the latest National Medical and Wellness Tourism Board meeting, Dr Naresh Trehan brought up the problem of unauthorized touts bringing a bad name to India. Dr Mahesh Sharma, Union Minister for Tourism & Culture agreed that the prevalence of unauthorized agents tarnished the image of India

The Ministry of Tourism is working to create a pool of registered medical travel agents and eventually registration will be made compulsory.

The ministry of Tourism is in consultation with the Ministry of External Affairs to use their missions abroad as medical tourism centres. 14 overseas missions can be doubled as wellness and medical tourism centres to give a boost to medical tourism. Making missions abroad also promote wellness tourism will save the cost of setting up new offices.