Travelling abroad to get cheaper and quicker medical treatment is a fast-growing trend. Health tourism is a stark illustration of how the private sector can impact on the public health system. It is estimated to be worth $60 billion, and is growing by 20% every year.
But while the wealthy elite benefits, ordinary people who depend on their national health systems risk losing out, as private providers attract the best health workers and a two-tier health system evolves.
A growth industry
With cheap flights and the ability to compare prices online, medical tourists are flocking to countries such as India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cuba and Singapore. Hospitals even offer packages including airport-to-hospital car service, in-room internet access and private chefs. Patients can also decide to tag on a holiday too.
Often the patients are wealthy elites from other developing countries in Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East. Ordinary patients from the developed world are also looking for cut-price routine operations, dentistry or cosmetic surgery, with qualified doctors and little or no waiting list.
India is seeing a boom in private hospitals and was estimated to have received around half a million medical tourists in 2007. Yet while India’s private medical industry enjoys tax breaks and other incentives, the public health care system is crumbling. There is already a low ratio of doctors per head of the population, but with some of the doctors in its national health service turning to lucrative private work, the number of doctors available to treat the poorest in society will fall still further.
Our view
- Public sector health work must be made more appealing with better pay and conditions. Otherwise the private health sector will continue to draw trained health workers away from the public sector as fast as new staff can be trained. This requires sustained increases in funding for health.
Last modified: 07/01/2011
