The global medical tourism market is
expected to reach $32.5 billion by 2019. Emerging trends show that medical
tourism is evolving. Niche middle classes are travelling to developed nations
and choosing quality of healthcare, over cost. Dubai has announced plans to
become the medical tourism global destination of choice by 2020. The city
intends to build 22 hospitals to attract 500,000 medical tourists a year and
boost its economy by up to Dh 2.6 billion.
Despite medical tourism includes all
imaginable directions (ranging from surrogacy to organ transplantation), let’s consider the picture of medical
tourism over an example of the cosmetic surgery. The top three countries
performing medical and cosmetic surgery in particular procedures include the USA,
Brazil and China. There can be a significant difference in costs for popular
cosmetic surgery procedures. For example, the average price for breast implants
in the USA is $10,000 compared to the same procedure in India and Colombia at
$3,500 and $2,500 respectively.
For any patient travelling outside
their home country for a cosmetic surgery procedure there are risks and safety
concerns to consider. These include the varying standards of care in each
country, travel risks after surgery, minimal legal recourse should anything go
wrong and crucially the issue of aftercare.
What is interesting about the
phenomenon of medical tourism and the cosmetic industry, is that traditionally
patients in developed nations travelled for cheaper costing treatments to
developing nations. That is now evolving. Take Australia as a case study example.
A burgeoning middle class from the
Asia Pacific region are flying in for treatment due to Australia’s reputation for excellent
standards of healthcare.
For this particular demographic, high standards in healthcare far outweigh the
cost of treatments. Over 10,000 medical tourism patients flew into Australia in
2013, injecting more than $26 million into the national economy. Compare this
to 2006 where medical tourism was worth $12.7 million to the national economy.
In seven years, the numbers have doubled and continue to grow.
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