India: Ayush Visa launched for foreign travellers to promote medical tourism

The Ministry of Home Affairs has notified the creation of a new visa category, Ayush Visa, for foreign nationals, who are keen to visit the country for medical treatment including therapeutic care, wellness and yoga in India.

The introduction of this special visa will meet the purpose of introducing a special visa scheme for foreigners visiting India for treatment across different streams.
Reports add that Ayush Visa aims to fulfil the need for introduction of a special visa scheme for foreigners. Referring to this, Union Minister of Ayush Sarbananda Sonowal added that this new initiative will help boost medical tourism in India, and will strengthen their endeavour of making Indian traditional medicine a global phenomenon.

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Earlier, in 2022, PM Modi had announced creation of Ayush Visa, seeking to make it a part of India’s roadmap for the Heal in India initiative of the government.

Later, the Ministry of Ayush and the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare collaborated to develop a one-stop Heal in India portal to promote India as one of the top medical tourism destinations in the world.

As per the report of ‘The Global Wellness Economy: Looking beyond COVID’ by the Global Wellness Institute (GWI), the Global Wellness economy will likely grow at 9.9% annually. This gives an estimate that Ayush-based healthcare and wellness economy will likely grow to $70 billion by 2025, marked by a tremendous growth in Medical Value Travel.

To enhance Medical Value Travel in Ayurveda and other traditional forms of medicine further, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoM) was also signed recently with India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), Ministry of Tourism, GoI.

With the central government introducing Ayush visa for foreign nationals seeking medical treatment like therapeutic care, wellness and yoga in India, the ayurveda treatment providers in Kerala are also hopeful that this will boost medical tourism here.