Guwahati: The Netherlands is bringing in the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in the healthcare sector of the Northeast with a total investment of €25 million in Ayursundra Healthcare under its Vision 2020 plan.
The second round of FDI from the Netherlands in Ayursundra, a private hospital, will come from the parent organisation Ayursundra BV and Dutch Good Growth Fund, a Dutch company which is part of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency set up by Amsterdam to support entrepreneurs.
An advanced centre for gastrointestinal and digestive sciences of Ayursundra was inaugurated on Tuesday by the Netherlands ambassador to India Alphonsus Stoelinga.
Two diagnostic centres - at Beltola and Barpeta - were also inaugurated by Stoelinga on Tuesday in the presence of non-executive directors of Ayursundra BV, Jan Willem Meeuwis and Maarten Scholten, while the foundation stone was laid for a hospital in Jorhat.
Healthcare in the region got its first FDI in February this year when investors from the Netherlands set up Ayursundra Superspeciality Hospital in Guwahati.
The hospital, with 300-bed facility at Gorchuk brought cutting-edge technology in the healthcare sector of the city with a state-of-the-art cardiac care unit, hand and foot reconstruction unit, high-risk pregnancy centre, trauma centre, laparoscopic and key hole surgery unit, liver transplant centre and bariatric surgery unit.
On Tuesday, Ayursundra Healthcare's executive director Himadri Shankar Barthakur said: "People of the northeastern states have been looking for specialty healthcare services and facilities closer to them. We are and will remain focused on our vision of providing advanced and world-class patient care services and facilities while keeping cost of services affordable. We are focusing on rapid growth and expansion towards healthcare capacity building to ensure on-time and the highest quality of medical care available for people residing in this region."
Ayursundra's Vision 2020 envisages setting up of seven diagnostic centres and two one-stop centres in Assam in the next two to three years. A centre in Shillong is also included in the expansion plan.
Stoelinga said: "Problem of healthcare access is same in the Netherlands and in India. The only difference - India has a major population comprising youths while most of the Dutch people are ageing."
"The aim is to provide affordable and accessible healthcare. The cost of treatment in India is one tenth of that in the Netherlands. There is good scope of medical tourism," he said.
"Already many Dutch patients are coming to India for dental treatment," he added.
