India is poised to become a global healthcare hub because it has several factors working in its favour, Apollo hospitals chairman Prathap C. Reddy said Wednesday.

Moves to give the health sector infrastructure status, announced in the current budget, would lend the required momentum to its growth by bringing in huge investments, Reddy said on the sidelines of the second India Health Summit.

"The investment required in the sector for the country to equal global standards is stupendous. This could be achieved only by drastic steps," he told IANS.

"Along with it (giving healthcare infrastructure status), the government will have to consider a drastic reduction in the customs and excise duty for equipment and direct taxes like income tax on medical profession," Reddy said.

He said he had in meetings with the prime minister, finance minister and the health minister sought to impress on them the need to bring about drastic changes in the government approach to the sector.

Several countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Britain were interested in investing in India's healthcare sector in a big way, provided the right guarantees were given, Reddy pointed out.

Earlier, in his special address to the summit organised by the Indian Healthcare Federation of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), an apex trade body, he said the healthcare cost in the country could be brought down by 40 percent through appropriate measures.

Reddy said the number of hospital beds in India worked out to only one bed for 1,300 people. This had to improve to the World Health Organisation (WHO)-stipulated level of one bed for 750 people.

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said her government would act as a catalyst to promote the country's development as a global healthcare hub. She urged healthcare institutions to reach out to rural and semi urban areas using modern technology to improve the quality of healthcare available to them.

The conference was organised in the backdrop of a recent study by CII and global economic research firm McKinsey & Co., that forecasts the requirement of 80,000 additional hospital beds every year for the next three to four years to meet the country's growing healthcare demands driven by its burgeoning middle class.

The country's healthcare sector is expected to grow from the current $18.7 billion to around $45 billion by 2012, according to the study.
 
The study says with the public sector capable of adding only 8,000 beds per year, the private sector has a huge responsibility, which also was a major business opportunity for it.

--Indo-Asian News Service