MUMBAI: His friends and relatives thought he had gone dotty when 63-year-old American national William Darling, announced plans to go to India for medical treatment. Doctors in the US had diagnosed Mr Darling as suffering from severe arthritis, a disease that causes pain and loss of movement of the joints. He was advised to undergo hip resurfacing - an alternative to total hip replacement - a high-end procedure, approved only two years back by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US.

"Doctors in the US have little experience with the procedure, while Indian doctors have been performing hip resurfacing for years," explained Mr Darling. "The quality of treatment I could receive in India would in fact be much higher than the US, and this too, at a fraction of the price that I would have to pay in the US."

Hip resurfacing costs as much as Rs 24.4 lakh in the US, as opposed to Rs 4 lakh in India. Like Mr Darling, an increasing number of foreign patients are coming to India for high-end treatment like cardiac procedures, oncology or neuro surgeries. This represents a major turning point, since until now, overseas patients came to India for simple or low-risk procedures, such as dental surgeries, discouraged at home by hospitals' endless waiting lists.

"In 2006, 70% of the 1,400 foreign patients who came to Wockhardt, underwent advanced procedures such as joint replacement, heart or spine surgeries," Wockhardt Hospitals CEO Vishal Bali said. An ageing population, social security systems' crisis, and soaring healthcare costs in the West, partly explain this new trend. "However, while today around 80% of our patients come from the West, the demand initially came from patients from developing countries who could not get access to quality speciality care," said Mr Bali.

After he broke his back bone in 2004, Hasan Changezi underwent four unsuccessful operations in Karachi. He was then referred by his doctor to a spinal surgeon in the UK. "Doctors in the UK were, however, charging close to Rs 13 lakh for a new surgery," explains Mr. Changezi. "I found out about Wockhardt Hospital in Bangalore while surfing on the net. The hospital offered non-invasive procedure, a technology not offered in Pakistan, and had spinal surgeons, which would be able to offer me the speciality care I required."

"We have received close to 20 queries from abroad every day for super speciality treatment over the last three months," said Mr Bali. "And patients from developed countries are likely to represent an increasing share of these patients."