Feri Marzuki Toni from Indonesia got a kidney transplant at Delhi’s Apollo hospital in February and has been here with his wife ever since. Their nine-year-old daughter is back home in Jakarta, living with her aunt. “We speak to her on videocall 2-3 times daily. She says she hates coronavirus !” says Toni, whose doctor had given him the nod to return home when the lockdown started. “I am paying $1200 rent for a 1BHK apartment in GK-1. Money is a problem now. Some of my family and friends have wired me money, but I don’t know how long I will manage like this,” says Toni.Like Toni, there are hundreds of international patients and their attendants stuck in India. With resources running low, many are desperate. eExpedise Healthcare, a medical tourism company, has 300-plus patients stuck in Delhi right now. “Some are post-surgery, some mid-treatment. They have limited funds and we are helping them with daily logistics,” says Amit Sharma , founder of eExpedise.If patients don’t know when they will be back home, medical travel companies don’t know how they will survive if international flights don’t resume. “We don’t see any medical travellers coming to the metros in India in the next two quarters. Maybe once flights resume in June, some patients would be able to travel to Tier 2 hubs like Mohali, Jaipur and Hyderabad. Even then, they have to get a Covid certificate and get into quarantine. All this is going to hit us badly,” says Rajeev Taneja, founder and MD, Global Care, a medical travel firm.At present there are over 4,000 players in India’s medical travel industry that generates $1 billion revenue annually. What adds to Taneja’s problems is that hospitals have stopped his payments for the last two months. “They owe us Rs 8-10 crore,” says Taneja who used to get 600-700 international in-patients every month. Now he is getting none.Mihir Vora in Mumbai says banks are also unwilling to lend. “All banks have put medical travel in high risk category. Getting loans will be a big challenge,” says Vora, founder and CEO, Magnus Medi But not everyone is worried. “The fears of medical travel industry shutting down are vastly exaggerated,” says a spokesperson of Max Healthcare. “There is a huge need for advanced medical treatment and services in large parts of the world. People will need affordable, high quality medical care in a post-Covid world as well. What we expect is that the rules of international travel will be tightened; surveillance at airports and entry and exit points will be more elaborate,” he adds. But he pegs the monthly revenue loss of Max Healthcare — that includes BLK hospitals — in the absence of international patients at Rs 40 crore per month.Meanwhile, Sudanese businessman Gasim Hasan, whose 16-year-old daughter, Asgad, has been unconscious in the ICU of Fortis Gurgaon after being operated for a malignant brain tumour on March 6, has to brave police barricades every day to get to the hospital. “I know this lockdown is for everyone’s good, but I am unable to comply because my daughter is unwell,” says the Khartoum resident.