Bangladesh International Medical City: From Exporting Patients to Exporting Healthcare!

Bangladesh has built bridges, expressways, power plants, ports and economic zones. It has developed a globally significant pharmaceutical industry and produced generations of capable doctors, nurses and medical professionals. Yet one uncomfortable question deserves serious national attention:

Why do hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis still travel abroad every year for medical treatment?

The scale is striking. According to India’s official Bureau of Immigration figures presented by the Indian Ministry of Tourism, 482,336 Bangladeshis travelled to India for medical purposes in 2024. The corresponding figure was 499,951 in 2023 and 326,805 in 2022. Bangladesh was the single largest source country for foreign medical-purpose arrivals in India in 2024.

India recorded 644,387 foreign medical-purpose arrivals in 2024, meaning Bangladesh alone accounted for approximately 75 per cent—roughly three out of every four officially recorded medical-purpose arrivals.

Even this may not tell the entire story. Some international visitors entering India as tourists or under other non-medical travel categories may also seek consultations, diagnostic services or treatment during their stay and would not necessarily appear in statistics specifically classified as medical-purpose arrivals.

More importantly, India represents only part of Bangladesh’s outbound healthcare story. Bangladeshis also travel for treatment to Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates and other destinations.

The issue, therefore, is not whether Bangladesh should prevent its citizens from seeking healthcare overseas. They must always have that choice. The real question is whether Bangladesh can create a healthcare ecosystem so clinically capable, technologically advanced and internationally trusted that more citizens choose to be treated at home.

Beyond Building Another Hospital

Bangladesh has achieved important improvements in public health. But serious structural weaknesses remain.

The World Health Organization reported in December 2025 that Bangladesh’s Universal Health Coverage Service Coverage Index stood at 54 out of 100. WHO also estimated that 41.7 per cent of the population—around 70 million people—experienced financial hardship associated with out-of-pocket health expenditure.

The healthcare workforce presents another challenge. A WHO assessment cited in the underlying proposal found only 9.9 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10,000 population in 2020, compared with a global median of 48.6 in the same assessment.

These numbers reveal something important: Bangladesh’s healthcare challenge cannot be solved simply by constructing more hospital buildings.

The real challenge is to create an ecosystem that combines clinical quality, specialist capacity, advanced diagnostics, modern medical technology, skilled human resources, research, education, affordability, and public confidence.

This is where the idea of a Bangladesh International Medical City deserves serious national examination.

Instead of another standalone hospital, Bangladesh could consider an integrated healthcare campus anchored by an approximately 1,000-bed international super-speciality teaching hospital.

The campus could integrate a Medical College, Advanced Doctors’ Training Institute, International Nursing and Allied Health Sciences Institute, Cancer Centre, Cardiac Centre, Neuroscience Centre, Kidney and Urology Centre, Liver and Hepatobiliary Centre, Organ Transplant Centre, Women’s and Children’s Hospital, advanced diagnostic and imaging facilities, rehabilitation and senior-care centres, medical research facilities, and digital-health and telemedicine services.

The concept can be expressed simply:

One Destination. Complete Healthcare.

From Exporting Patients to Exporting Healthcare

No single Medical City can transform the healthcare system of a country of more than 175 million people. Bangladesh will continue to need stronger primary healthcare, district and public hospitals, rural healthcare, financial protection and insurance mechanisms, and a substantially larger healthcare workforce.

But a Medical City could address one particularly important missing layer: globally competitive tertiary and quaternary healthcare.

Imagine the strategic transformation.

Today, a Bangladeshi patient requiring highly specialised treatment may travel abroad. Tomorrow, more of those treatments could be available at home.

Today, our doctors often travel internationally for advanced training. Tomorrow, leading international professors, surgeons and medical institutions could provide training and collaborative programmes within Bangladesh.

Today, Bangladesh is overwhelmingly a source of outbound medical travellers. Tomorrow, internationally accredited Centres of Excellence could enable Bangladesh itself to attract patients.

That would represent a fundamental change in direction:

from exporting patients to exporting healthcare services.

Healthcare Is Also an Economic Sector

Every Bangladeshi treated abroad potentially spends foreign currency not only on hospital treatment but also on diagnostics, medicines, accommodation, transportation, airfare, food and the expenses of accompanying relatives.

We should be careful with exaggerated claims about precisely how many billions of dollars Bangladesh loses annually through medical travel. There is no sufficiently comprehensive official dataset to establish such a figure with confidence.

But we do not need an exaggerated number to understand the economic significance.

Bangladesh can pursue two objectives simultaneously: retain foreign currency by providing more internationally competitive treatment at home, and earn foreign currency by attracting international patients.

Healthcare should therefore not be viewed solely as expenditure.

When a foreign patient comes to Bangladesh and pays for treatment, Bangladesh is effectively exporting a healthcare service. That patient may also spend on hotels, transport, food, pharmaceuticals and other services.

The principle should nevertheless remain clear:

Medical tourism must follow medical excellence—not precede it.

International patients will come only when clinical quality, patient safety, outcomes and trust justify their journey.

Bangladesh Can Export Healthcare Talent Too

There is another opportunity that deserves equal attention: nursing and allied healthcare.

Global demand for qualified nurses and caregivers is substantial. Bangladesh, however, should not simply export professionals from an already inadequate domestic workforce. The sustainable answer is to dramatically expand training capacity.

Bangladesh could train substantially more nurses and allied-health professionals than it does today, strengthen domestic staffing and prepare additional qualified professionals for international markets through language, licensing and professional-development programmes.

English, Arabic, German and Japanese could be taught according to actual destination-country requirements.

This could gradually help Bangladesh move from predominantly exporting lower-skilled labour towards exporting more highly trained professional human capital—generating higher salaries, remittances, international experience and eventual knowledge transfer.

Who Would Pay for a Medical City?

A natural question is whether Bangladesh can afford a project of this scale.

Perhaps the better question is: Does the Government have to finance the entire project itself?

It may not.

For conceptual discussion, depending on land, clinical scope, medical equipment, academic and research facilities, advanced technology and supporting infrastructure, an integrated Medical City of this scale could potentially require investment in the region of US$1.5–2.5 billion.

That is not a project cost estimate. It is a preliminary planning range that would have to be tested through an independent bankable feasibility study, detailed Medical Master Plan, clinical-demand assessment and international cost evaluation.

The more important question is how such an investment could be structured.

I recently discussed the concept with Mr. Yong Lee, President of Minede Investment SRL, USA, particularly from the perspective of international project financing.

One possibility is an EPC+F model—Engineering, Procurement and Construction plus Financing—supported by syndicated international financing, subject to Government support and a bankable project structure.

A properly designed international consortium could potentially combine an EPC contractor, project financiers, an experienced international hospital operator, medical-technology companies, equipment suppliers and an international academic or clinical partner.

International commercial banks, export-credit agencies, development-finance institutions and strategic investors could potentially participate according to the final financing structure.

But EPC+F does not mean free money.

International financiers will require a credible feasibility study, sustainable revenue model, repayment mechanism, appropriate risk allocation, Government approvals and acceptable security arrangements.

Government support, however, does not necessarily mean that the Government must fund the entire project.

It could mean facilitating suitable land, establishing the project framework, coordinating regulators, creating an empowered implementation mechanism and providing investors with predictable policies and approval procedures.

Procurement Must Remain Transparent

The possibility of implementing such an integrated project through a Direct Procurement Method (DPM) may also be examined, but only where the applicable laws and procurement regulations permit it and all necessary approvals are obtained.

For a project potentially involving billions of dollars, DPM cannot become a substitute for transparency, rigorous due diligence or value-for-money assessment.

If a consortium offers a genuinely unique and integrated financing, technology, hospital-operation and EPC solution that provides lawful grounds for direct procurement, the Government may examine that option.

But whether the eventual structure should be DPM, competitive international procurement, PPP or another model must be decided by the competent Government authorities following legal, technical and financial assessment.

A National Project Needs Coordinated Leadership

A Medical City would involve multiple institutions: the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Finance Division, planning authorities, investment agencies, medical and nursing regulators, land and environmental authorities, immigration, tourism and others.

Without institutional coordination, even excellent projects can become trapped between agencies.

Bangladesh could therefore consider, subject to Government policy, designating the initiative as a National Priority Healthcare and Medical Tourism Project, supported by a dedicated coordinating mechanism or Special Project Directorate under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The objective would not be to bypass Government procedures. It would be to make those procedures work through one coordinated implementation framework.

A Medical City Must Serve Society

There is also an important warning.

An International Medical City must not become an isolated luxury enclave serving only wealthy patients.

If Government support is provided, there should be measurable public benefits: treatment allocations for Government-referred patients, training positions for Bangladeshi doctors and nurses, knowledge-transfer obligations, research partnerships, local employment and appropriate affordable-care mechanisms.

Foreign investment should bring more than money.

It should leave behind technology, knowledge, clinical standards, management capability and institutional capacity.

What Could the Economic Impact Be?

The economic case must ultimately be established through a bankable feasibility study rather than optimistic projections. But illustrative scenarios demonstrate why the idea deserves examination.

If the Medical City eventually enabled Bangladesh to retain just US$250 million annually in healthcare expenditure that might otherwise occur overseas, the gross amount retained over 20 years would be approximately US$5 billion. At US$500 million annually, it would be approximately US$10 billion.

Medical tourism and professional healthcare exports could add further economic activity.

Under the manuscript’s moderate illustrative scenario—US$250 million annually in retained healthcare expenditure, US$100 million in medical-tourism receipts and US$100 million in additional healthcare-professional remittances—the combined gross foreign-exchange-related flows could approach US$450 million annually, or approximately US$9 billion over 20 years.

Under a more ambitious illustrative scenario, the corresponding gross flows could approach US$950 million annually, or approximately US$19 billion over 20 years.

These are not forecasts, GDP additions or guaranteed returns. They are illustrative scenarios intended to demonstrate the possible order of magnitude. A professional feasibility study would need to calculate Net Present Value, Economic Internal Rate of Return, employment, fiscal revenues, GDP value added, foreign-exchange effects, operating and financing costs and broader socioeconomic returns.

The First Investment Should Be in Knowledge

Bangladesh does not need to become Singapore or Dubai overnight.

It needs to create a healthcare model appropriate to Bangladesh—international in quality, competitive in cost and sufficiently accessible to deliver genuine national benefit.

And the first step should not be pouring concrete.

The first step should be an independent, bankable international feasibility study examining clinical demand, outbound patient flows, land requirements, CAPEX, investment and financing structures, hospital economics, medical tourism, workforce requirements, environmental sustainability and socioeconomic returns.

If the numbers support the vision, Bangladesh can then invite experienced international medical-city developers, hospital operators, financiers, technology companies and academic institutions to participate.

The long-term national strategy can be expressed in five words:

SAVE foreign currency by treating more Bangladeshis at home. EARN foreign currency by attracting international patients. REMIT foreign currency through internationally qualified healthcare professionals. CREATE high-value employment, education, technology and medical research. SUSTAIN development through an SDG-aligned healthcare ecosystem.

Almost half a million Bangladeshis officially travelled to India for medical purposes in 2024 alone.

Perhaps the most important question for Bangladesh is therefore no longer simply why they went.

The question is:

What must we build so that tomorrow Bangladeshis have the confidence to stay—and patients from other countries have the confidence to come?

That is the case for a Bangladesh International Medical City.

One Destination. Complete Healthcare. Global Standards.

The writer isMohammad Anwar Global Economic Affairs Analyst, Researcher and Columnist Dubai, United Arab Emirates