Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

146 ● Medical Tourism in Developing Countriesquality of care in developing countries should they decide to extend insurancefor international treatment. Even if they do not allow portability ofinsurance, these insurance companies are nevertheless interested in qualityof international health care because their insureds sometimes return frombad medical care and burden the system with additional treatments toremedy the problem.Numerous bodies set standards for medical care. The principal advisoryand regulatory international organizations were introduced in chapter 4.However, they are not directly involved with setting standards. For that,there is the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This is aglobal network that “identifies what international standards are required bybusiness, government and society, develops them in partnership with thesectors that will put them to use, adopts them by transparent proceduresbased on national input and delivers them to be implemented worldwide.”14 The ISO is an international organization that pulls togethernational standards bodies of 149 member countries. Therefore, to participate,each country must have its own rules that regulate health care.The most common domestic rules pertain to pharmaceuticals, medicaldevices, and medical processes, as illustrated by the examples below. InMalaysia, the Drug Control Authority is involved in the drug approvalprocess, safety, promotion, and surveillance 15 (incidentally, traditional medicinesare not exempt from regulation: of the 22,000 drugs registered by theMalaysian Drug Control Authority, some 8,000 are traditional 16 ). In India,the GS1 India (an affiliate of GS1 Inter national based in Belgium) is a jointindustry-government initiative to bring international practices to a specificaspect of the Indian medical process, namely supply chain management.Within the health-care industry, it deals with the application of moderntechnologies to inventory, supply management, patient record retrieval,billing, and medical recalls, among others. 17 In the Philippines, the departmentsof tourism, health, and energy came up with rules and regulationsfor health establishments, as well as hospitals and wellness centers. 18 Theyhave used the Department of Tourism’s standards for hotels as a benchmark.In Thailand, the Act on Medical Care Institutions B. E. 2504 states theregistration procedure and quality control of private hospitals. 19 Withrespect to processes, Malaysia introduced the Telemedicine Act of 1997, oneof the new cyberlaws necessary to regulate new forms of trade in medicalservices. 20Medical enterprises with linkages to multiple countries must abide bymultiple standards. For example, Bharat Biotech has adhered to the GMP(good medical practice) standards (a set of duties and responsibilities forphysicians set up by UK’s General Medical Council). In addition, since the