Third World plan to save NHS

Cataract op: Average wait in England is seven months

A Labour MP says flying patients abroad for cut-price operations could save the UK National Health Service "from collapse".

You could fly out a patient, fly out a relative, give an operation to a someone local and still be quids in

Frank Field

Former welfare reform minister Frank Field pointed out that health care in many Third World countries was a fraction of the UK price.

Mr Field urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to seriously consider his plans for what he is calling NHS International.

But the scheme is already running into opposition from health care workers who said ill patients would not want to travel around the world for treatment.

Frank Field: "No compulsion"

Mr Field said the system could help patients in developing countries if the NHS agreed to pay also for the treatment of a local person for every UK national treated.

He told the BBC: "If you took at India for example, you could fly out a patient, fly out a relative, give an operation to a someone local and still be quids in.

"I am not advocating this for cheapness. I am saying that since the prime minister has said there is going to be a big boost in the health service budget expectations are rising.

"I don't believe that in the very short run we can fulfil that."

Mr Field said that:

• Kidney transplants cost £500 in India compared to £8,490 in the UK.
• The £5,000 cost in the UK of a heart bypass was 10 times more expensive than in India.
• Hip replacements costing up to £6,500 in Britain cost £865 in India with no waiting time.

Mr Field said that NHS International would help save the NHS "from collapse" this coming winter but that no patient would be compelled to travel for an operation.

But James Johnston, a surgeon at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, says Mr Field's plan could be the last thing that someone who is sick wants to contemplate.

"The very last thing you would want [as a patient] is to be shipped across the world to a country where health care standards are not as high as in Europe, or where hygiene or tropical diseases might be a problem."

Waiting lists

Some UK patients, so tired of waiting for cataract operations are already travelling to India for surgery - for a fraction of the price of a private operation in the UK.

Official figures for England show that patients, most of them elderly, wait an average of seven months for a cataract operation.

Mr Field suggested India and China as countries which may be able to reduce the strain on NHS waiting lists.

"The costs are so different that NHS International could be quids in even if the patient took a relative over to accompany him and paid for their fares and hotel costs," Mr Field wrote in the Sunday People.

The MP acknowledged some people would say it was "wicked" to exploit such developing countries, but he said China and India wanted to market their health services overseas.

In 10 years time the two Asian powers would be "the major players in this new emerging world market," he said.