Medical Tourism In India

With India becoming a mecca for infertile couples, medical tourism has clearly laid an offshore pipeline for the global fertility tourists to fish for cut-price generic material from country’s pool. Though, medical tourism stumbles onto few legal and ethical obstacles in many countries like Canada, France and UK, where laws and statutes cover the legal issues of fertility treatment. 

In India, without real ethnic or legal implications, medical tourism has opened new avenues for couples seeking IVF treatment in pocket friendly rates. Couples wanting to undergo IVF treatment tend to churn out leads from internet to get best, assured and cheap fertility help. India, with its fascinating culture, also has impressive IVF with less than lesser implications and more chances of fertility. Beyond border quest for babies has globalised the surgical procedures, giving multiplicity of options to infertile couples before actually undergoing the life changing procedure.

While some countries have shortage of women donors, some actually restrict the doctors with legal implications. However, the scenario is rather more flexible in India. With higher rate of IVF successes, India has ace on its sleeves to have magnified its presence on world map. Easing the paramount concerns of infertile couples, hassle-free treatment and more chances of getting pregnant has anointed the country as one of the favorite destinations for medical tourism. Also to add, commercial surrogacy is completely legal in India, increasing international confidence on the country for treatment. It is one of those countries where legal issues around fertility treatment are left to official guidelines. For example, many countries have strict single embryo transfer policies, while in India will leave the number of embryos implanted up to the discretion of the fertility specialist. Where implantation of single embryos dims the chances of conceiving, it also reduces faith on the entire procedure. 

Apart from legal regulations, the fragile cord of ethnic inference has rarely affected the surrogacy procedure as anonymity of the donor is maintained. Boasting its large pool of skilled doctors and low treatment prices, healthcare balances the global brain drain of IT and medicine. Medical tourism has clearly shrunk the borders and brought countries closer to resolve medical issues over a wider spectrum.

With population of humongous proportion, need of availability, accessibility and affordability to reduce exacerbating health insecurity would be the pressing concern in few decades. However, the IVF successes have seeded the hope of infertile couples to experience the bliss of parenthood, with such procedures becoming bold predictions of reckoning.

Dr Neeraj Pahlajani