Manipur as Medical value tourism in South East Asia

Imphal, May 7: “Can Manipur dream to become a healthcare destination of South East Asia?”- the most asked question among the people of the state particularly those working in Health care sector as well as those in the tourism sector.
The answer is simple – we need to look and find out the available opportunities, strengths and explore the new medical technology, said Dr. Kh. Palin, the Managing Director of Shija Hospitals and  Research Institute (SHRI). 
Manipur has tremendous scope to be a destination of Medical value tourism not only for South East Asian Countries but from other countries too, said health entrepreneur Icon in North East India Dr Palin added.
He said first of all, our state has abundance of opportunities because of our location, hospitality nature of our region, comfortable weather, land, lake, hills, short surface connectivity with Myanmar, Trans Asia Highway, International Airport, India’s “Look East” policy  and so on.
Besides, Manipur being in the border with Myanmar and being at the meeting point of 2 super power nations – India and China we can take a lot of opportunities, Palin said. He also added that the state is also a destination for War tourism as the region was a battlefield of World War II .
We have two Medical colleges and a number of Nursing as well as Paramedical Institutes which produces enough number of medical practitioners and nursing staffs, the SHRI Managing director said with pride.
However, there is urgent need to update the facilities available here to attract medical tourists.
 There, we need to rethink our healthcare planning and develop Infrastructure and HR, Quality and Accreditation, Law and Order, Accessibility, Affordability according to our opportunity, he maintained.
Since the Government alone cannot handle healthcare of 1.3 billion populations of India. Public Private Partnership is the most effective ‘Mantra’ to provide affordable quality healthcare to the masses. Categorisation of healthcare institutes and quality control should be undertaken, he added.
In order to attract medical tourist in the state, he commented that since only quality service will attract more medical value tourists, a task force constituted by Ministries of Health and Family Welfare and Tourism may assess the opportunities for promoting our state as one of the health destination and formulate policy to promote and control the quality of healthcare of the state which will also automatically generate nearly 2 lakhs of employment in turbulent Manipur.