Virendra Singh Rawat / Lucknow
The Yogi Adityanath government 2.0 is working towards positioning Uttar Pradesh as a medical hub in South Asia.
A greenfield UP Medical Devices Park, spanning 350 acres, is coming up in Noida. The domestic medical devices market is currently valued at nearly $10 billion.
The Park targets to serve both the domestic as well as the export market once it is up and running.
According to the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD), the imports of medical devices in India jumped 41 percent to Rs 63,200 crore in 2021-22 from Rs 44,708 crore in 2020-21.
Since India imports about 80 percent of its medical devices requirement, the country is heavily dependent on foreign suppliers especially China and USA. High end medical devices such as cancer diagnostics, medical imaging, ultrasonic scans etc form the bulk of the import basket.
In recent years, imports have been surging as leading hospital chains make huge investments to cater the domestic healthcare as well as medical tourism, which is pegged to contribute $2 billion to the Indian healthcare space.
Although India is planning to cut imports from China, yet the results have been far from satisfactory with Dragon contributing Rs 13,538 crore worth of shipments in 2021-22.
According to Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) CEO Arunveer Singh, the Park will realise the grand vision of ‘Make in India’ and self-reliant India.
So far, YEIDA has allotted land to 59 medical devices companies with job potential of 5,000 in the Park project. The companies will invest about Rs 415 crore to manufacture a range of medical devices.
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These comprise including orthopedic implants, oxygen concentrator, anaesthesia needle & kit, anaesthesia workstation, spinal implant, X- ray machine, endoscopic, stent, ICU ventilator, ECG machine, chemotherapy device, radiology device, portable mobile lab, electrolyte analyzer etc.