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NEW DELHI, INDIA, October 20, 2004: Three months ago, Howard Staab learned that he suffered from a life-threatening heart condition and would have to undergo surgery at a cost of up to $200,000 — an impossible sum for the 53-year-old carpenter from Durham, N.C., who has no health insurance. So he outsourced the job to India. Taking his cue from cost-cutting U.S. businesses, Staab last month flew about 7,500 miles to the Indian capital, where doctors at the Escorts Heart Institute & Research Centre — a sleek aluminum-colored building across the street from a bicycle-rickshaw stand — replaced his balky heart valve with one harvested from a pig. Total bill: about $10,000, including round-trip airfare and a planned side trip to the Taj Mahal. “The Indian doctors, they did such a fine job here, and took care of us so well,” said Staab, a gentle, pony tailed bicycling enthusiast who was accompanied to India by his partner, Maggi Grace. “I would do it again.” Staab is one of a growing number of people known as “medical tourists” who are traveling to India in search of First World health care at Third World prices. Last year, an estimated 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical procedures, and the number is increasing at the rate of about 15 percent a year, according to Zakariah Ahmed, a health care specialist at the Confederation of Indian Industries.

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