On November 28, Kolkata-based gynaecologist Indranil Saha declared on social media that he would stop seeing Bangladeshi patients at his clinic. “Nation comes before livelihood,” he wrote on Facebook with a purported photo that showed students walking over an Indian flag kept at the gates of a Bangladeshi college.
Saha is not the only doctor to have taken such a stand following tensions between India and Bangladesh.
JN Ray Hospital, a private facility in central Kolkata, made a similar announcement on November 30. “Until the situation improves in Bangladesh, we will not treat any patient from Bangladesh,” a senior manager of the hospital said.
A private hospital in Agartala too has decided not to treat Bangladeshi patients, while a doctor in Bengal’s Siiguri has demanded that everyone, “especially Bangladeshi patients”, should bow down to the Indian flag before entering his chambers.
Such instances of doctors refusing to treat patients on the basis of their identity raise a question of violating medical ethics, senior members of the medical fraternity told Scroll. They said that while there was anger among some doctors over the alleged desecration of the Indian flag in Bangladesh, only a few of them have refused to treat patients from the country.
Bangladesh has been in turmoil since early August after countrywide protests toppled the Sheikh Hasina government. The interim government headed by Muhammad Yunus has had its hands full with political uncertainty and unrest.
On November 25, the Bangladesh police arrested Hindu leader Chinmoy Krishna Das, a monk from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness – Iskcon. India’s Ministry of External Affairs condemned Das’s arrest while flagging allegations of attacks on minority Hindus in Bangladesh. On December 3, Indian protesters forced their way into the premises of the Bangladesh High Commission in Agartala and vandalised it, escalating the situation further.
The prolonged uncertainty has affected Bangladeshi patients who come to India for treatment. More than half of all international medical tourists to India are Bangladeshis, said a report by analyst and ratings group CareEdge published in August. In 2023, 60%-70% of the 6,35,000 medical tourists to India were from Bangladesh, said the report.
But after India imposed visa restrictions in August, Bangladeshi patients have not been able to travel for treatment. The curbs and spiralling tensions are having broader repercussions. Indian-owned hospitals and businesses allied with medical tourism have suffered losses due to the reduced footfall.
There is no official data on the number of Bangladeshis who have been denied medical visas but there are many, like Zakaria Al Mamun Jony, who are at risk of medical complications.
Jony, 42, a garment manufacturer in Joypurhat district of Bangladesh, has been waiting to get a visa to India for treating his kidney ailment. In February, Jony underwent month-long treatment at Apollo Hospital in Kolkata. The doctors asked him to return for further treatment in September but he hasn’t got a visa yet. India has only been allowing a limited number of visas for students and urgent medical cases.
“I have the documents which show that I was asked by doctors to come again in September,” Jony told Scroll. “If that is not an urgent medical need then I do not know what is.”
Khadiza Alam, a professor of biology in Rajshahi district, told Scroll that she has been trying for over four months to get a medical visa for her husband so that he could have heart treatment in India. “Now, I am looking to take him to Thailand instead,” Alam said.
Farzana Chowdhury Borsha, a Dhaka-based customer care executive at Bangla Health Connect, an Apollo Hospitals helpline dedicated for patients from Bangladesh, told Scroll that inquiries for visa applications and doctor appointments had fallen by “more than half” from six months ago. “Most of the inquiries now are from people who are already in India asking whether we could facilitate extending their visa and duration of treatment,” said Borsha.
The CareEdge report anticipated a decline in Bangladeshi patients but expected the situation to normalise by the end of the year.
That seems unlikely now.
AB Siddique, who owns a lodge near an Apollo Hospital branch in Chennai, said that normally, he would host 30 to 40 Bangladeshis every month. “Currently, only three families are here and even they will leave shortly because their visa is going to expire,” Siddique told Scroll.
Siddique said that no doctors or hospitals in Chennai have refused to treat patients from Bangladesh. “If this trend spreads, our business could suffer even more because most patients from Bangladesh make the first stop at Kolkata and then come to other cities if they need to,” Siddique told Scroll.
Avijit Chowdhury, a doctor at Kolkata’s Indian Institute of Liver and Digestive Sciences, told Scroll that the instances of denying treatment were not expected to have a long-term effect on medical tourism from Bangladesh. He called this a “transient phenomenon”, and expected the close cultural ties between the two countries to prevail.
Chowdhury said that he did not subscribe to the idea of denying treatment on the basis of identity. “As a doctor I don’t think I have any right to deny any patient whatsoever,” he said. The alleged desecration of the Indian flag in Bangladesh should not be seen as the voice of the common people in the country, he said.
But Samar Saha, a travel agent in Kolkata’s New Market, said that since the reports of doctors refusing treatment emerged, he got calls from three patients in Bangladesh asking if it was safe to come to India. “Business has already dwindled,” Saha said. “I used to get tickets made for 15-20 people travelling on medical visas every month.” But in November, these numbers were down to two or three with no booking in December, he said.
Abhay Shukla, the national co-convenor of public health advocacy group Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, was sharp in his criticism of doctors declaring their refusal to treat Bangladeshis. “They should be arrested and their clinical establishment should be shut down,” he told Scroll. He said it was “grossly unethical” and that such doctors were defaming India.
Shukla pointed out that the West Bengal Clinical Establishment (Registration, Regulation, and Transparency) Act prohibits discrimination by clinical establishments on the grounds of nationality or religion.
Discriminating against patients is also prohibited under the Charter of Patients’ Right and Responsibilities, recommended by the National Human Rights Commission. The charter, which is supposed to be implemented by state governments, says patients cannot be discriminated against on the basis of religion, ethnicity, linguistic or geographical and social origins.
Saha, however, said that the few Bangladeshi patients who came to Kolkata in the recent months, have not faced any trouble in getting treatment.
But there is some mistrust and fear among Bangladeshis. Jony, the kidney patient, said that since hearing about the denial of treatment to Bangladeshis, he was having second thoughts about coming to India even if he got the visa. “I went to India for treatment not only because of better medical facilities, but because I felt at home there,” Jony said. “But the situation is different now.”