Medical Tourism: Emerging Destinations @ 空思想

Regular exercises and healthy living habits can at most reduce the risk of falling ill due to various health complications and diseases. It is a hard fact that despite our best efforts, we can never have full control on our health and can?t avoid sudden illnesses and health disorders. Recovering from illness is a time taking, often painful and a costly affair. Though we may not be able to avoid this unwelcome experience, we can at least make the process of our recovery an affordable, less painful and a far more ?pleasant? one.

A quick recovery from a bout of illness depends on various factors like immediate medical attention, quality of doctors, available medical infrastructure and facility, healthy ambience and equally competent medical staff. A perfect combination of all these are often not available in most developed countries or could be availed for a fortune. However, in contrast to the steep medical costs of these nations, many developing countries offer similar or even better medical services at an affordable price. In addition, most patients traveling abroad for medical treatment gets the opportunity to club an inexpensive vacation with their medical tour. This led to the evolution of a new term in the medical sector called medical tourism/ healthcare tourism that combines affordable and quality medical treatment along with an inexpensive vacation package.

Over the past few years the medical tourism industry has experienced a massive growth. Developing countries like India has emerged as one of the most preferred destinations for the medical tourists. In the year 2002, it had been estimated that approximately one hundred and fifty thousand patients from various countries opted for medical treatment in India. This success can be attributed to the efforts of the Indian government in conjunction with various state-of-art private hospitals working towards a common goal of promoting medical tourism in India and making her a global leader in this sector in the coming years. According to various estimates, a treatment package in India is around one tenth of the costs involved in countries like the United States and Britain. Above all, India produces a fairly large number of good doctors every year. The Escorts Heart Institute and Research center in India reportedly performs around 15000 heart surgeries in a given year with a post surgery mortality rate of only 0.8%. Experts predict that by the year 2012, the size of medical tourism in India will be $2.1 billion dollars a year with more that half a million patients opting for medical tourism package in India.

Apart from India, Thailand is also among the most sought after destinations for medical tourism. In the year 2002 around six hundred thousand patients opted for medical tour in places like Bangkok and Phuket. In the year 2005, a hospital in Bangkok took care of 150000 patients coming from all over the world. It had been projected that the medical tourism industry in Thailand may touch the 36 billion baht mark by the end of the year 2006.

In the coming years the medical tourism industry will be on a continuous process of growth. Many other developing nations are expected to extend healthcare services to the medical tourists. This will certainly make the market even more competitive, which will result into an even better quality of services being extended to the patients. Medical tourism has certainly added a new dimension to the healthcare industry and has given the patients a convenient and affordable way to recover from a bout of illness.

Alfred Anderson has rich experience in the field of online brand marketing. His interests includes Internet marketing and research on emerging online business trends. Healthcare Tourism