India's medical tourism industry is in a quiet downturn. Foreign patient arrivals have fallen roughly a third since 2019 from nearly 700,000 visitors to around 500,000 dragged down by strained ties with Bangladesh, visa processing times stretching up to 60 days, and aggressive competition from Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. A tax incidence on medical referrals threatens to push costs higher just as global insurers remain largely unempanelled with Indian hospitals. The silver lining: average revenue per patient is rising, as high-value procedures like oncology and cardiac surgery now dominate. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to ET’s Forum Gandhi and pharma editor Vikas Dandekar about the problem, its reasons and fixes.

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