‘I feel helpless’: India-Bangladesh tensions deny patients medical access | Health

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Khadiza Khatun’s life took a devastating flip in September when docs at Dhaka Medical Faculty Hospital knowledgeable her that her 37-year-old husband, Mohammad Nuri Alam, urgently wanted a liver transplant – a process unavailable in Bangladesh.

After cautious analysis, they determined to go to India’s Asian Institute of Gastroenterology in Hyderabad, a trusted vacation spot for a lot of Bangladeshi sufferers.

However three months later, they’re but to safe visas for the journey. Amid escalating tensions between India and Bangladesh because the August ouster of Sheikh Hasina, an ally of New Delhi’s, from Dhaka, Indian authorities have considerably scaled again visa operations in Bangladesh.

The end result: Khadiza and her husband have already missed two hospital appointments, on November 20 and December 20, and are not sure about whether or not they’ll have the ability to get to India in time for January 10, the following date the medical facility in Hyderabad has given them.

“We’ve tried the whole lot since October – approaching journey businesses, searching for assist from associates in authorities,” she advised Al Jazeera. “India stays our solely hope.”

Confronted with unaffordable therapy choices in Thailand and different nations, Khadiza is left watching her husband’s well being deteriorate whereas counting on each day symptomatic therapy in Dhaka hospitals – hoping that the brand new yr will deliver her the visas her husband and she or he desperately want. “I really feel helpless, operating between hospitals with no resolution,” mentioned the mom of two.

Khadiza’s battle displays a bigger disaster affecting 1000’s of Bangladeshi sufferers, who depend on India’s inexpensive healthcare, due to the visa restrictions launched by the Indian authorities. The Indian visa centre, on its web site, says that it is just “providing restricted appointment slots for Bangladesh nationals requiring pressing medical and pupil visas” and is “at the moment processing solely a restricted variety of visas of emergency and humanitarian nature”.

In response to an Indian visa centre official in Bangladesh, each day on-line visa slots throughout 5 Indian visa centres in Bangladesh, together with Dhaka, have “plummeted to round 500” from over 7,000 because the onset of the protests in July that led to Hasina’s elimination from workplace.

For a lot of Bangladeshis, like Khadiza, the actual probability of getting visas feels even slimmer.

The slide in ties

India-Bangladesh relations have deteriorated since Hasina fled the nation for New Delhi on August 5 after a weeks-long student-led protest in opposition to her more and more authoritarian rule.

India has since sheltered Hasina, straining ties – the interim Bangladesh authorities of Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus, final week despatched New Delhi a diplomatic notice searching for her extradition.

In the meantime, the Indian authorities has advised Bangladesh it’s involved a few spate of attacks against Bangladeshi Hindus. Dhaka, on its half, insists that almost all assaults have been political in nature – in opposition to perceived supporters of Sheikh Hasina – quite than non secular of their character. Bangladesh has additionally accused Indian media channels of exaggerating the dimensions of violence in opposition to Hindus.

These tensions between the 2 governments have additionally impacted visa issuances. On August 26, a protest broke out on the Indian visa centre in Dhaka over processing delays, after the authority resumed “restricted operations” in protest-hit Bangladesh on August 13. Throughout the border, a Bangladeshi diplomatic mission within the northeast Indian metropolis of Agartala was attacked by a mob in early December, prompting a powerful protest from Dhaka.

On January 1, the normally bustling premises of the Indian visa centre in Dhaka appeared practically abandoned. Only some candidates had been ready to submit their paperwork. Most candidates acquired calls to submit their visa functions and charges on the visa centre after manually offering a replica to the Indian Excessive Fee in Dhaka days earlier.

Nonetheless, Khadiza, who adopted the identical course of a month in the past, was unsuccessful. A visa centre official advised Al Jazeera that the excessive fee has begun accepting extra emergency functions, although on-line submission choices stay restricted.

Some Bangladeshis, who delayed their journey to India for therapy as they waited for tensions to ease, at the moment are caught with expired visas.

“My and my spouse’s visas had been legitimate till December 10, however we didn’t journey then as a consequence of tensions over Bangladesh-related points in India,” mentioned 40-year-old Shariful Islam, from Joypurhat in northwestern Bangladesh.

Islam suffers from a lung illness. He and 5 different members of the family – every with their very own well being points, together with his spouse and father – have for the previous 4 years been travelling repeatedly to the japanese Indian metropolis of Kolkata and the southern metropolis of Vellore for medical therapy.

In a rural space of Joypurhat, Ridowan Hossain, who runs a visa help company, has in the meantime been struggling to safe visa appointment slots for sufferers, together with a most cancers affected person urgently searching for therapy in India. Over 10 days, he repeatedly tried to finish the net software course of however constantly confronted failures on the cost stage, he mentioned.

When he known as a helpline, he mentioned he was simply advised to attempt once more.

“I course of over 300 Indian visas yearly, however I haven’t been in a position to course of a single one since July,” he mentioned.

Now, many Bangladeshi sufferers are searching for various therapy choices in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Turkiye.

Mazadul Noyon, supervisor of Suea Noi Match & Fly, a Bangkok-based medical and tour operator company, advised Al Jazeera that inquiries from Bangladesh have doubled in comparison with earlier than August. “Though round 80 % of sufferers contemplate Thailand after failing to safe an Indian visa, most abandon the thought upon studying of the 10-15 occasions increased prices in Thailand,” he mentioned.

For instance, the preliminary therapy price for Khadiza’s husband – protecting prognosis, medication, session, and associated bills – together with journey and lodging, would vary from US$1,000 to US$2,000 in India, in comparison with a minimum of US$10,000 to US$15,000 in Thailand.

For a cardiac ring implant, prices in Thailand vary from $5,000 to $20,000 – relying on the hospital, excluding journey and lodging. In India, $2,000 covers top-quality rings and medical care. The price of these procedures is even increased in nations like Malaysia, Singapore and Turkiye, making them unaffordable for many Bangladeshis.

A lose-lose state of affairs

Nevertheless it isn’t simply Bangladeshi sufferers who’re struggling – India’s “medical tourism” business, which gives high-quality therapy to sufferers from the creating world at comparatively decrease costs than within the West, has taken successful too.

Business information reveals that 60 % of India’s two million worldwide sufferers yearly are from Bangladesh. Nonetheless, since late August, the variety of Bangladeshi sufferers has dropped by 80 %. India’s medical tourism business was price an estimated $9bn in 2023.

Amitabha Chattopadhyay, a paediatric heart specialist at Narayana Superspeciality Hospital in Kolkata, advised Al Jazeera that his hospital has seen a 5 % decline in Bangladeshi sufferers.

“However the hospitals treating continual situations are dealing with even larger challenges,” he mentioned.

Hospitals in Kolkata, the closest metropolis to Bangladesh and culturally comparable, are the worst affected.

At Peerless Hospital, a 500-bed multi-speciality hospital in Kolkata, each day outpatient visits from Bangladeshi sufferers have dropped from 150 to beneath 30, with practically no admissions, The Print, an Indian digital publication, has reported, citing the hospital’s CEO, Sudipta Mitra.

Different key impacted hospitals embrace Narayana Well being in Bengaluru, Apollo in Chennai, and Christian Medical Faculty in Vellore, based on Alexander Thomas from the Affiliation of Healthcare Suppliers of India.

In the meantime, two hospitals in Kolkata and Tripura reportedly refused Bangladeshi sufferers, citing alleged disrespect to the Indian flag, additional straining ties, based on native information studies in early December.

‘Very tough’

Touhid Hossain, the performing head of Bangladesh’s Ministry of International Affairs, acknowledged that the nation’s sufferers had been struggling due to Indian visa restrictions.

“Not simply tough. It has turn into very tough,” Hossain advised Al Jazeera.

M Humayun Kabir, a former diplomat and president of Bangladesh Enterprise Institute who beforehand served on the Bangladesh mission in Kolkata, echoed this sentiment.

“Emergency visas had been purported to be processed, however I’ve acquired studies in any other case … It seems there hasn’t a lot alternative to acquire [Indian] visas,” he advised Al Jazeera.

Bilateral relations seemed to be thawing when Indian International Secretary Vikram Misri visited Dhaka on December 9, marking the primary high-level assembly between India and Bangladesh because the latest political modifications in Bangladesh.

Hossain confirmed that Bangladeshi authorities raised visa-related issues with their Indian counterparts throughout the go to. “They assured us that they’d enhance visa issuance and prioritise pressing circumstances,” he mentioned.

But there was no change to this point, say sufferers and visa brokers.

India’s International Ministry and the Excessive Fee of India in Dhaka didn’t reply to a request from Al Jazeera for feedback on the criticism of New Delhi over visa restrictions.

However throughout a gathering with diplomatic correspondents in Dhaka on December 24, Indian Excessive Commissioner Pranay Verma claimed that India’s visa issuance in Bangladesh nonetheless surpasses that of “most likely all different embassies mixed”.

He additionally mentioned that he stays optimistic about the way forward for Dhaka-New Delhi relations – a sentiment that Hossain, the de facto international minister of Bangladesh, echoed when talking with Al Jazeera.

Analysts, nonetheless, stay sceptical.

“Each events discuss good relations, however the actuality suggests in any other case,” mentioned Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, an unbiased Indian journalist specialising in South Asian points.

Kabir, the retired Bangladesh diplomat, mentioned he hoped the 2 governments would have the ability to insulate visa issuances from their broader diplomatic tensions.

In the event that they don’t, the neighbours may face penalties, he cautioned.

“Such stances create a damaging mindset among the many public and might hurt long-term people-to-people relations,” Kabir mentioned.

However Khadiza doesn’t have the luxurious of ready for much longer.

“The visa help company nonetheless hasn’t submitted the applying,” she mentioned, her voice heavy with disappointment. She’s mentally making ready herself for the replace that the applying couldn’t be submitted – even because the clock ticks away for Alam, her husband.