India’s Advanced Medicare and Research Institute (AMRI), in the city of Kolkata is engaged in recruiting UK trained doctors to cater to patients who travel from Britain to India for medical treatment. The medical treatment available in India is reputed to be both low priced and fast. Some companies have been doing brisk business for the past few years arranging for the medical treatment of British patients in India by offering a single-window facility by which the patients are taken care of right from their travel from Britain to India and back after treatment and recovery.
An advertisement in the British Medical Journal next month is also expected to attract more applicants. Roy, a freelance orthopedic surgeon, told the paper: "I was approached by AMRI while I was visiting my mother in Kolkata. They wanted me to head a recruitment drive in Britain to attract young doctors to go and work in India."It's a two-way thing. India can benefit from having doctors with experience in dealing with Europeans while the doctors benefit from working in a challenging new environment. It's quite ironic how things have turned full circle in the last 40 years or so. In those days Indian doctors were literally flooding the country to staff a severely under-manned NHS. Now India is trying to woo them all back as well as attract European-born staff."
Roy said AMRI Hospital was prepared to pay for interested doctors to fly out to India and spend a few weeks working in the plush hospital in the heart of Kolkata.
"They will get full hands-on experience and will even be invited to carry out basic surgery," he said. "The pay by Indian standards is very good but the incentive to work here isn't really financial. It's more a case of getting job satisfaction as we have so many patients", he was quoted as saying.
Reports say that about one million people in Britain are currently on NHS waiting lists. Queues can mean a wait of up to 10 months for a hip replacement and six months for a heart surgery.
Undergoing the same treatment in India costs a British patient a fraction of the cost of having it in the private sector in Britain.
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