Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

Would You Like a Safari With Your Lasik Surgery? ● 93of tourist experiences is improving and expanding. Suppliers of nonmedicaltourism, such as hotels, are also attracted to the opportunities of tie-ins(according to Johanson, those resorts that allocate their resources to focuson health and wellness will dominate the resort market 114 ). Governmentshave also jumped on the bandwagon. For example, Chinese authorities haverecognized that foreigners who have come to China specifically for healthcareservices often travel within China afterwards. 115 In Iran, the HealthMinistry is expanding ties with the Cultural Heritage and TourismOrganization in order to promote linkages between health and tourism. 116Some suppliers have deemed holiday tie-ins to medical procedures to bealmost irrelevant since medical tourism tends to be associated with pain andsuffering, and those who do it are not likely to care about vacations.Henderson said that medical tourism arises “from pain and suffering andcarries intimations of human mortality, which are discordant with thehedonism of mainstream tourism.” 117 She goes on to say that the prioritiesof such tourists deviate from the typical leisure tourists. Henderson’s argumentis certainly valid for major illnesses as some invasive procedures,especially those that carry large risks, are unlikely to leave the patient seekinga sun tan. However, medical tourism in the twenty-first century entailsmore elective invasive procedures than not. Furthermore, most diagnosticprocedures and all lifestyle medical tourism are likely to utilize the tourismcomponent. The lower the severity of the medical condition requiringtravel, the greater the influence of the tourism component is likely to be.If more people in the future travel abroad for more and varying medicalreasons because of cost or other issues, then they will likely be partaking inserious procedures, and then, the tourism component of medical tourismis likely to fall. Tourist planners will have to continuously come up withmore interesting and relevant tie-ins if they want to forestall the evolutionof the practice into simply medical travel.