Forty four year old Ms Misty  Eve Vanhaitsma from Michigan  would have preferred to have her spinal disc replacement surgery from the United states if that was possible , that is she she could have done that.

Self employed and not covered by insurance,Misty decided alternately to search across the internet to shop around for some accredited Hospital that offered her an  affordable surgery which  could have given her’ quality medical ” treatement along with savings in terms of ” the treatment cost. Her research threw up opportunities in Spain and India, and Misty is now  recovering now in Fortis Hospitals,Bangalore.

Looking to return home quickly and even looking forward to her “ equestrian” later, Ms Misty is more than happy with her surgery, her choice of hospital and her dream team of medical professionals which treated .In fact she quips, no more than the reliable looks of her doctor ,may have resulted her in choosing  Indian and ” Fortis Hospitals” as  the first place.

Bottomline though her surgery  back inthe USA would have set her down by  $200,000 , was done in $20,000 in india she points out  and there in hangs a mesage for the US, says Indian healthcare representatives , specially so as  Barrack Obama comes home to India, spearheading the Campaign,  to  reform  Healthcare in the United  States, making it affordable and expanding its coverage  to uninsured  Americans.

No Backlash: Healthcare might not be an agenda when president Obama comes calling  to Indian later this week, but the US could do well to pave the way as to recognize India as an affordable destination, for quality medical Treatement,according to Fortis Hospitals CEO, Vishal Bali.

The outsourcing backlash that paves information technology, these days , need not  hold good for healthcare as when it comes sending patients to India,and results in financial savings for the US people,Mr Bali explains. India does have its own internal issues in making ” quality healthcare accessible ” but on a global platform it is still more affordable  than other countries, he says. Illustrating this he says ” Joint Replacement” costs  $11,000 in India , while the same procedure will cost almost $50,000 in the United States.

Similary “ Cardiac Surgery” will cost  about one seventh  of the US cost, between $65,000 to $100,000, he points out.Fortis Hospitals already sees some  20,000 patients every year.

Over the last several weeks stories of the NDM superbug have been pasted across global media. The Lancet report which first talked about this issue has been for years talking about the issues of MRSA (Multi Drug Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) in UK hospitals.

Ever since the first antibiotic “penicillin” was introduced in the 1940’s bacteria began to develop resistance to its effects and the cycle of innovating and researching new antibiotics began to take shape. Bacteria therefore do not get limited by geographical boundaries and similarly the use and overuse of antibiotics is not limited by geographies but has become prevalent worldwide. The data set in the report does not support the hypothesis that the superbug came or originated in India. A total study of 37 patients from the UK out of which only 17 had a history of travelling to India and Pakistan is a miniscule sample size compared to the global community that criss crosses continents everyday on business and leisure apart from the medical travelers. The article does not conclusively state that the travelers picked the bug in India since all the UK Ecoli isolates were different from the strains picked in India and they could not prove a statistically significant strain relatedness between Indian and UK isolates.

It is ironical that in 2006 the same research team had reported a far more dangerous super bug from an infection outbreak in a hospital in Houston, Texas which was termed VIM 7. VIM 7 was resistant to all drugs except Polymixin B while NDM 1 is susceptible to Tigecyclin and Colistin. One wonders why the research team did not choose the name VIM 7 as “ Houston Superbug “ while they chose to name NDM 1 AS “ New Delhi bug “

Viruses and Bacteria are a global phenomenon and outbreaks of new resistant bacterial strains are a way of life. The lancet article lists the presence of similar super bugs in other countries. In Jan 2009 UK health authorities issued a national resistance alert for stringent infection control since new bacteria were getting introduced in the country through patients with history of hospitalization in US, Greece, Turkey and Israel. India did not find a mention in that list.

The point therefore is that the issue of “Super Bugs” is prevalent in most developed and developing countries of the world. Hospital systems around the world spend each day of their life in giving a new lease of life to their patients, some now help to not only protect the lives of people in their own country but for the millions who travel from their country of origin to other countries in search of better and affordable healthcare. Medical globe trotters who visit the Fortis Hospitals in India have often described their experience of going through complex joint replacements, spinal surgeries and cardiac surgeries as truly life changing experience. They stand testimony to the most stringent standards that we follow to ensure patient safety and care.

The world therefore should spend less time in analyzing the country of origin of bacterial strains and spend more energy in getting the best medical minds together to innovate drugs to combat them.

India has made significant strides in both forms of healthcare- be it Pharmaceuticals or in super specialty healthcare service delivery. What is probably the world’s latest is invariably India’s first in many of the advanced healthcare institutions in the country. Most corporate hospitals have been accredited by the world’s most stringent accreditation bodies that go through intrinsic details before they accredit a hospital like the Joint Commission International Accreditation from the parent body JCAHO from the United States of America.

We live in a globalised world where water, air and capital flows seamlessly and new solutions are found each day to issues that first seem to block free mobility and then become trivial. Medical Travel as a phenomenon has now anchored itself to save and enrich the lives of many and the controversy of  NDM 1 has already sunk in the delight of all the positive experiences that patients from around the world have experienced in India.

Fortis Hospitals is all set to  commence operations at Kolkata  by the launching the  upcoming hospital off the  EM Bypass which is likely to be commissioned in July

The Rs 150-crore hospital in Anandapur is coming up on a two-and-a-half-acre plot. It is one of the three Wockhardt Hospitals properties in India that the Fortis Healthcare chain had bought last year.

“Construction, stalled for 14 months, resumed in January. The first phase with 200 beds will be ready in July,” said Vishal Bali, the chief executive of Fortis Hospitals. “The entire 400-bed unit will be completed by next year,” he said.

Cardiology, neurology and gastroenterology are among the departments the new hospital will have. There will be facilities for minimally invasive surgeries and haepatobiliary surgeries, including liver transplant.

Fortis Hospital & Kidney Institute – Kolkata is also a part of Fortis Hospitals. The Fortis Hospital, Kolkata is the first and the only dedicated super specialty Kidney Hospital in Eastern India, established in the year 1988.

As an experienced and established network of healthcare providers, over the years it has become the single point solution for all kind of Urology and Nephrology diseases.