In conclusion, India, a nation that little westerns know about, has been plagued by its extreme underdevelopment throughout the course of its history. One of India’s first media debuts began with its overpopulation issues. In 2006, it was estimated that India’s population stood at 1,095,352,000, 32 percent whom lived below poverty. Additionally, India has also gained mass media for its lax tolerance towards child prostitution.
Child prostitution in India has been attributed towards the overwhelming amount of poverty which has caused many families to sell their children into sex-slavery in order to take away the burden of providing food and shelter for unwed girls. Girls as young as 8-years-old have been sold to prostitution houses where they are sold for sex. Prostitution has been the primary contributor in India’s drastic spread of HIV/AIDS. In addition to India’s working poor and constant spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, India is very much below development on a worldwide scale.
Despite India’s problems within the country, the nation can provide something for foreigners that other developed nations cannot provide for their own citizens; Cost-effective health care. Medical tourism, technically defined as provision of ‘cost effective’ treatment in collaboration with the tourism industry for patients needing survival and other forms of specialized treatment (“Medical Tourism”). In short, medical tourism is an integration of recreation and medical procedures which allows patients to travel and retrieve medical treatments.
Medical tourism has become a $1 billion industry in India. It is the effectiveness of cheap medical care that draws foreign patrons to India. Currently, the United States is plagued with an overwhelming amount of its citizens that do not have viable health insurance. In 2005, more than 53 percent of lower class and 41 percent of middle class Americans did not have health insurance (“A painful trend”). These figures have since risen, putting more strain on those whom are in dire need of medical treatment for life-threatening diseases.
India offers an outlet for Americans in need of low-cost medical attention. For instance, a liver transplant in the United States is an estimated $350,000 USD while the surgery in India is only $55,000. Although India’s status is developmental as a nation, the healthcare sect is outstanding for foreigners. Dr. Subhash Gupta, a surgeon in New Delhi has over 150 liver transplant surgeries under his belt and has been given a gold standard by the United States for his excellence as a surgeon.
Additionally, although the black market for organs has been illegal since 1994 many willing doctors are willing to perform the surgery for desperate Americans who would rather take the risk than waiting along with 95,135 others whom are awaiting transplants on the national donor waiting list. While many others are skeptical of safety in traveling abroad for medical purposes, India has thus proved that their private facilities where medical tourists receive service are just as good if not better than hospitals in the United States.
Despite the amount of positive propaganda that India has received for medical tourism, the government has received disapproving scrutiny for the lack of affordable healthcare that it offers to its natives. However, unless governments takes action to reform the current healthcare crisis in United States and India, Americans will continue to travel to India and India’s natives will continue to suffer.
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