Phillip Mwebaza
INDIA – According to a report in the Economic Times, Indian hospital chains are working to change the way that people travel to other countries for medical care by accelerating direct entry into regions like the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the rest of South Asia, which are the main sources of patients for various diseases in India.
Leaders of significant hospital chains told ET that although globalisation was already planned before COVID, they now recognise the need to move more quickly due to rapidly increasing inflation, expensive travel, and pressure from the various governments to generate local jobs and lessen dollar outflow.
The largest healthcare provider in India, Apollo Hospitals, is leading this effort on a worldwide scale. In order to establish a tertiary care hospital in Uzbekistan, Apollo and a local partner signed an operating and management agreement earlier this year.
“We are now operational in Bangladesh, we are operational in Nigeria, we have a project in Uzbekistan, we have four feasibility and commissioning studies in Samoa Islands, Ghana, Cameroon and Zambia,” said Dinesh Madhavan, president, group oncology and international, Apollo Hospitals.
The World Bank provided finance for the construction of a 375-bed multi-speciality in Chittagong, which Apollo has agreed to administer and manage in Bangladesh. The hospital network is still examining these opportunities in a number of other nations.
Over the following three to four years, Madhavan said Apollo wants to increase its managed care beds from the present 1,000 beds abroad by a factor of triple or quadruple.
The majority of Apollo’s growth will be accomplished through operational, management, and branding licencing agreements under asset-light models.