NEW YORK: India is surging ahead in the race for medical tourism leaving behind countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore which were earlier considered preferred destinations of foreign patients.

India holds a strong appeal for Americans as the exploding costs of medical treatment in the US are forcing them to venture to exotic places to get heart surgery, cancer therapy, and dentistry.

Many Indian hospitals have been quietly negotiating with US companies to send their employees to India for medical treatment at \"rock-bottom rates\", as one brochure of a Bangalore-based hospital in circulation in the New York/New Jersey region professes.