| Verified against primary record | |
| Foreign arrivals on medical purpose | 659,356 in 2023 and 644,387 in 2024, sourced to the Bureau of Immigration in a ministerial reply to Parliament[1] |
|---|---|
| What the series counts | Arrivals rather than persons, with purpose derived from visa type since 2016 rather than from a declared purpose at entry[2] |
| Share of total arrivals | 7.4 per cent of 6,437,467 arrivals in 2022, in the ministry’s own statistical volume[2] |
| Medical attendant visas | At most two attendants at a time for most nationalities, one for Pakistan nationals and three for Bangladesh nationals[3] |
| Independently reported | |
| Revenue and accredited-hospital counts | Asked for in Parliament in July 2026 and not provided by the Government in its reply[4] |
| Bands apply only to the rows beneath them. The arrivals series and the visa-category series are the same underlying count read two ways, and neither is a count of patients treated. | |
Medical tourism in India is one of the few treatment-travel sectors with a published official statistic, and the statistic does not measure what it is usually taken to measure. India counts arrivals by holders of medical-category visas, not patients treated, and the distinction changes how every derived figure should be read.
The official numbers
A written reply in the upper house of Parliament on 7 August 2025 by the Union Minister for Tourism and Culture gives foreign tourist arrivals on medical purpose, with the annexure sourced to the Bureau of Immigration: 182,945 in 2020, 323,748 in 2021, 474,798 in 2022, 659,356 in 2023 and 644,387 in 2024, together with 131,856 for 2025 up to April, described as approximately 4.1 per cent of total arrivals in that period.[1] A government backgrounder of 2 May 2026 gives 507,244 for the full year 2025 against total arrivals of 9.15 million, a share of about 5.5 per cent.[5]
The ministry’s own statistical volume supplies the share and the denominator for an earlier year. Its table on the distribution of arrivals by purpose puts the medical row at 7.4 per cent for 2022, against total arrivals of 6,437,467, also credited to the Bureau of Immigration; the arithmetic matches the absolute figure above, which confirms that the two are the same series. The same table carries a note that visa-type data was received for 5,940,794 of the 6,437,467 arrivals, with the remainder assigned to an unknown purpose category.[2]
A parliamentary answer of 31 July 2026 gives the same quantities by visa category for 2023 to 2025: medical visas 643,541, 624,761 and 482,786; medical attendant 15,650, 18,510 and 22,748; and small numbers under traditional-medicine categories introduced from 2024, with grand totals of 659,191, 644,429 and 508,330.[4] Those totals track the arrivals series almost exactly, which is further confirmation that one underlying count is being reported two ways.
What the series does not count
Three definitional points, all from the publisher’s own material, change the meaning of these figures. The figures are arrivals, not unique persons: one person entering twice counts twice. Purpose is not a declared purpose at entry, because the disembarkation card that once collected it was discontinued and purpose has been derived from visa type since 2016, with visa categories grouped into purpose buckets. And the publication reports three distinct arrival series for the same year, foreign tourist arrivals, arrivals of non-resident Indians, and international tourist arrivals, which must not be mixed as denominators.[2]
The honest description of the series is therefore arrivals by holders of medical-category visas. It excludes anyone who enters on a tourist visa and receives treatment, and it includes anyone who enters on a medical visa and does not proceed to treatment. It is not a patient count, and the parliamentary answer that reports it does not use the word issued either, so it should not be described as a count of visas issued at missions.
One further publication change matters for anyone tracking the series. The ministry’s annual statistical volume has been renamed, and the newer edition dropped the purpose-of-visit table altogether, so the 2023 edition reporting 2022 data is the last with that table, and for later years parliamentary answers and government releases are the only official route to a medical figure.[6]
The visa regime
The authoritative provisions document sets out two paper categories, a medical visa and a medical attendant visa, for the sole purpose of treatment at established, recognised or specialised hospitals or treatment centres, with treatment under Indian systems of medicine also considered. Initial validity is up to one year or the duration of treatment, whichever is shorter; missions may issue a six-month triple-entry medical visa for nationals of countries outside a listed group; the regional registration offices may extend by up to one further year on a medical certificate from a recognised hospital, with anything beyond that requiring the home ministry. For nationalities other than Pakistan and Bangladesh, no more than two attendants or family members may hold the attendant visa at a time; for Pakistan nationals the limit is one and for Bangladesh nationals three. The document also places obligations on the hospital, to email the medical invitation to the mission in a prescribed format and to issue extension and registration letters for the patient and attendants.[3]
The electronic route has been widened. The parliamentary answer of July 2026 records that electronic medical visa validity was raised from 60 days to one year, that entries were raised from three to multiple, that the facility was extended to nationals of 176 countries, and that electronic categories for traditional-medicine treatment and for an accompanying attendant were added.[4] The country count has moved between official statements, so it should always be dated.
Regulation of facilities and of specific treatments
Individual practitioners are regulated by a statutory commission established under an Act of 2019, Act No. 30 of 2019, dated 8 August 2019, which provides for the repeal of the earlier medical council legislation of 1956 and the dissolution of its council on a date appointed by the central government.[7]
Facilities are a different matter, and the position is the single most important regulatory fact for a prospective patient. The Clinical Establishments Act of 2010, Act No. 23 of 2010, dated 18 August 2010, provides for the registration and regulation of clinical establishments, but applied initially only to four states and the union territories and extends to any other state that adopts it by resolution. Nineteen states and union territories have adopted it, each with a dated notification.[8] There is therefore no uniform national minimum standard for private clinical establishments across India, and whether one applies depends on the state the hospital is in.
Three treatment areas carry specific restrictions that bear directly on inbound travel. For organ transplantation, the rules made under the 1994 Act require, where a donor or recipient is a foreign national, that the relationship be certified by a senior official of the embassy of the country of origin on a prescribed form, or by that country’s government where it has no embassy in India; requests where the donor, the recipient or both are not Indian nationals go to an authorisation committee; and an Indian living donor may not donate to a foreigner who is not a near relative.[9]
For surrogacy, the restriction works differently from how it is usually described. The Surrogacy Act of 2021, Act No. 47 of 2021, dated 25 December 2021, never uses the words citizen, foreign national or overseas citizen. It restricts access through its definitions, confining surrogacy to a legally married Indian man and woman, or an Indian woman who is a widow or divorcee aged between 35 and 45, with a certificate of recommendation required for a couple of Indian origin or an intending woman; the Act does not define how Indian or Indian origin is to be construed.[10] The express bar on foreign nationals and on overseas citizen cardholders is not in the statute at all: it rests on a home ministry circular of 3 November 2015, under which no visa is issued to foreign nationals intending to visit India to commission surrogacy, and no permission is granted to overseas citizen cardholders to do so.[11] That circular predates the Act by six years and operates through visa and registration policy rather than through the statute.
For assisted reproduction other than surrogacy, the position is the opposite and is worth stating plainly because it is widely misreported. The Assisted Reproductive Technology Act of 2021, Act No. 42 of 2021, dated 18 December 2021, contains no nationality restriction. Its definitions of a commissioning couple and of a woman carry no nationality term, and the Act does not use the words citizen, nationality, foreign national or overseas citizen anywhere. What it does restrict is the movement of material rather than who may receive treatment, prohibiting the transfer of human gametes or embryos outside India for research and the import of embryos or gametes.[12]
Promotion policy, and what the Government has not published
The national branding is a tourism ministry strategy formulated in 2022, with a national strategy and roadmap for medical and wellness tourism built on several pillars including an online medical value travel portal, and with the health ministry coordinating across the ministries of home affairs, tourism, traditional medicine, external affairs and civil aviation.[13] No launch date, Cabinet decision or budget announcement for the initiative was located in any official source, and the public portal carries no launch date and brands itself under a different programme name, which belongs to a separate commerce-side export promotion effort.
The most useful thing the Government has declined to publish is a revenue figure. The July 2026 parliamentary question asked for revenue and for counts of accredited hospitals, and the reply provided neither.[4] That is the cleanest available answer to the market-size figures in circulation: the state that holds the arrivals data has been asked for a revenue figure in Parliament and has not produced one. Circulating billion-dollar valuations are built by multiplying an arrivals or visa count, which is not a patient count, by an assumed spend per patient that is never sourced.
See also
- Medical Tourism Market Size, on how arrivals counts become unsourced valuations
- Transplant Tourism, the area where India’s rules on foreign nationals are most specific
- Surrogacy Abroad, where the Indian restriction operates through visa policy rather than statute
- Traditional Medicine Tourism, now carrying its own Indian visa categories
References
- Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Tourism. Medical Tourism in India. 7 August 2025; written reply in the Rajya Sabha by the Union Minister for Tourism and Culture; annexure sourced to the Bureau of Immigration. Verified against primary record: the release was opened and the annexure totals by year read. One country row in the annexure duplicates another exactly and appears to be a transcription error; the column totals are used here and that row is not. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, Market Research Division. India Tourism Statistics 2023. Verified against primary record: the publication was opened and the purpose-distribution table, the medical row, the total arrivals figure, the note on visa-type coverage, the definitional note on arrivals rather than persons, the derivation of purpose from visa type since 2016, and the three distinct arrival series read. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Ministry of Home Affairs, Foreigners Division, Government of India. Details of visas granted by India. File No. 25022/62/2020-F-I, August 2020. Verified against primary record: the document was opened and the two medical categories, the purpose test, the validity and default-entry provisions, the extension powers, the attendant limits by nationality and the obligations on hospitals read. The day of the month is garbled in the document’s extracted text and is therefore not given. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Lok Sabha Secretariat and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Lok Sabha unstarred question No. 2222, Medical Tourism. Answered 31 July 2026 by the Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare. Verified against primary record: the answer was opened and the table by visa category for 2023 to 2025, the electronic visa measures and the absence of any revenue or accredited-hospital figure read. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Press Information Bureau, Government of India. Medical and Wellness Tourism in India. 2 May 2026. Verified against primary record: the backgrounder was opened and the 2025 medical arrivals figure, the total arrivals figure and the named participating bodies read. This is a government backgrounder rather than a parliamentary answer and is not attributed to a named minister. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, Research and Analytics Division. India Tourism Data Compendium 2025. Verified against primary record: the publication was opened, its table range inspected and the absence of any purpose-of-visit table confirmed, establishing that the annual statistical volume was renamed and dropped that table. Its executive summary states a medical share for 2024 without a source line, and that percentage is therefore not used here. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Parliament of India. The National Medical Commission Act, 2019. Act No. 30 of 2019, dated 8 August 2019; copy hosted by the statutory regulator. Verified against primary record: the Act was opened and the act number, the date at its head, the gazette reference and the repeal and dissolution provision read. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, National Council for Clinical Establishments. The Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010, with the council’s list of adopting states and union territories. Act No. 23 of 2010, dated 18 August 2010. Verified against primary record: the Act was opened and its number, date, long title and application provision read, and the council’s itemised adoption list with its dated notifications read separately. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Government of India. Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Rules, 2014, made under Act No. 42 of 1994. Gazette copy hosted by the Public Health Department, Government of Maharashtra, notification 218(E) dated 27 March 2014. Independently reported: the gazette copy was opened but its body is in a legacy font encoding that does not extract, so the rule numbering and the detail of the foreign-national procedure were read in a commercial legal database reproduction and corroborated against the partial decode of this official copy. The prefix of the notification number could not be resolved between two readings and is therefore given as the number alone. The prescribed form for embassy certification of the donor and recipient relationship in cases involving foreigners was verified separately on a state government organ donation portal. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Parliament of India. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021. Act No. 47 of 2021, dated 25 December 2021; commencement 25 January 2022. Verified against primary record: the Act was opened and its definitions of couple, intending couple and intending woman, the certificate provision, and the absence of the words citizen, foreign national and overseas citizen read. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Consulate General of India, San Francisco, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Guidelines for commissioning of surrogacy in India, citing Ministry of Home Affairs circular No. 25022/74/2011-F.I(Vol.III) dated 3 November 2015. Verified against primary record: the page was opened and the visa bar on foreign nationals and the position on overseas citizen cardholders read. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Parliament of India. The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021. Act No. 42 of 2021, dated 18 December 2021; copy hosted by the National Judicial Academy. Verified against primary record: the Act was opened and its definitions of commissioning couple and woman, the absence of any nationality term, and the provisions restricting transfer and import of gametes and embryos read. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Update on improving medical tourism in the country. 21 March 2023; written reply in the Rajya Sabha by the Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare. Verified against primary record: the release was opened and the year the national strategy was formulated, its pillars and the list of coordinating ministries read. The release gives no release or approval date for the strategy. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
Sourcing note: the transplant rules are the weakest-sourced item in this entry. The official gazette copy was opened but is in a font encoding that does not extract, so the rule structure was read in a commercial legal database and corroborated against a partial decode of the official text; the notification prefix could not be resolved and the rule numbers are therefore not cited. A possible amendment to those rules in April 2026 was identified during this work and not opened, so the provisions described may not be current. The surrogacy and assisted reproduction findings are deliberately stated as what the enacted texts do and do not say, because the common claim that both statutes bar foreign nationals is accurate for one and not the other.