The growing medi-tourism industry straddles the line between boon and bane while offering viable health care alternatives.

By Elizabeth Kerr

Medical and wellness tourism isn’t a new concept. For decades (in some cases, centuries), people have been making pilgrimages in order to take advantage of a region’s healing qualities – think of the Dead Sea. It is estimated that in the last decade, travel for the express purpose of having elective and cosmetic surgeries, fertility treatments and annual diagnostics has jumped drastically, though no official body currently maintains statistics. That said, Cuba, India, the UAE, Malaysia, Brunei, Costa Rica, Jordan, Singapore and dozens of other countries have actively promoted their medical industries to foreign travellers and all claim bull markets.

The medi-tourism trend does have critics who are quick to remind that there are risks involved (as with any medical care). But for-profit healthcare within the tourist trade, it is particularly worrisome. For instance, malpractice is often difficult to avoid and follow-up care is complicated. It is also becoming a real concern that many providers are not accredited by a reputable governing body and basic safety in locations like Colombia or South Africa. And as Indian doctors Samiran Nundy and Amit Sengupta wrote in the British Medical Journal in 2005, domestic public healthcare is suffering as the government neglects local citizens’ needs in its haste to tap a growing revenue source — something that could happen anywhere.

Are there any identifiable factors that give rise to the medi-tourism industry, and if so what are they? “For a start, the global healthcare system crisis,” reasons Dr Paulo Malo, president of the Malo Clinic Health & Wellness Group. “Also with globalisation, we see more outsourcing of healthcare, and the rise of medical tourism … led to an increasing demand for healthcare and wellness service, especially in Asia, as the medical costs are relatively lower than in the United States and Europe.”

Therapeutic Tours
The wellness industry is a growing segment of the medical tourism trend. Increasingly, travellers are choosing vacation spots able to fulfill the twin benefits of leisure and health commitments. Wellness clinics, however, are often separated from hospitals largely due to holistic and/or alternative complementing programmes many of the clinics offer.

“Wellness” as a concept dates back to the 1950s, when American doctor Halbert Dunn wrote High Level Wellness. In a series of lectures and papers that eventually made up that book, Dunn stated that if wellness could be measured in biochemical, physiological, and psychological terms, it could also be used as a gauge that transcends and assists standard medicine to become a barometer for overall health.

Wellness clinics have slowly and steadily been making inroads within medical tourism. The spa element in conjunction with an equal focus (in most clinics) on emotional and psychological health have gone a long way toward cementing that leisure component - something a hospital would never be able to. Wellness clinics are aesthetically pleasing and comforting, and the programmes encompass a great deal more than standard medical testing; everything from weight loss, smoking cessation, to understanding nutrition and making wholesale lifestyle changes can be done at wellness clinics like Maya Tulum in Mexico, Australia’s Lilianfels Blue Mountains Resort & Spa, Italy’s Grotta Giusti and Pujjis Wellness Retreat in New Zealand.

Not only are the locations a bonus (who wouldn’t want to get well in Tuscany?), the broad range of services designed to keep one healthy - services not normally provided by a GP - are what is attracting increasing numbers of patient/ travellers, particularly to low-cost Asia. As Malo succinctly put in, “People are living longer and healthier. The quest for health and wellness has become a part of our modern living lexicon, where we appreciate prevention instead of cures.”

Did You Know?
In March 2008, Business Week reported that greater and greater numbers of American insurers are encouraging policyholders to seek treatment (both curative and preventative) overseas. The Independent in the UK pointed out that approximately 40,000 British citizens travelled abroad for dental care in 2007. The combination of overtaxed public infrastructure in welfare states like the UK, Canada, and Scandinavian countries, unfeasible and/ or unreasonable insurance premiums and hidden coverage caveats in the United States and the relative affluence of residents in North America, Europe and Australia - home to the vast majority of medical tourists - together are a formula that makes a trip to Thailand for a check up a viable option for many.