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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | In search of hope and care: Medical tourism or forced migration?

In search of hope and care: Medical tourism or forced migration?

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published Published on Mar 16, 2022   modified Modified on Mar 18, 2022

-Down to Earth

The arduous journeys of those who migrate for medical treatment in India

Marta kya na karta (One can do anything when pushed to the wall),” says 40-year-old Rita Kumari from Supaul district of north Bihar.

At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was tightening its grip across the country Rita and her daughter, Sandhya, had to undertake multiple trips to hospitals in Nepal and Uttar Pradesh, before reaching the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi in October 2020.

Sandhya had recently been diagnosed with haematologic cancer. Sandhya's father, who worked as a manual labourer in Ludhiana, Punjab, joined them a few months later in Delhi after losing his job during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021.

The family has left behind two younger children in the village under the care of relatives.

As Sandhya’s treatment requires frequent visits to the hospital, they have rented a room, almost 25 kilometres away in Gurugram, to live along with informal workers from their village — their only source of solace in the vast unknown city.

Globally, mobility for healthcare is often put under the umbrella of “medical tourism”, which depicts healthcare-related migration as an act of choice or privilege.

However, the fact is in various geographical contexts like that in India, millions of people are forced to migrate in search of adequate medical care and with the hope of another chance at life.

Some even migrate for secondary healthcare, which is either unavailable close to their locality or unaffordable as offered only by private hospitals and doctors. The final medical destinations for most are the metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and other urban centres where public hospitals offer affordable and advanced medical care.

Data with the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) on domestic tourism in India (for 2014-15) shows that 36.6 million health-related trips were made in India, including travel within the home district and to other districts in the home state as well as in other states.

The number of such trips made from rural areas outweigh those made from urban areas by a significant margin. This difference in numbers exposes the regional disparities in healthcare provision in India and how people negotiate these inequalities. They, however, remain silent about the phenomenon of migration for healthcare.

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Down to Earth, 16 March, 2022, https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/health/in-search-of-hope-and-care-medical-tourism-or-forced-migration--81973?fbclid=IwAR2hXFS_h0O85E8XrCsWRSDenfLBmpSUUkc7bevn0ReMRQXkwHS97vasjeU


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