Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

Plastic Surgery is Not Peanuts ● 25This comes as no surprise, given the overall growth of the world economy.When a society experiences economic development, fundamentalalterations occur in the structure of its economy. 24 This structural transformationentails changes in the sectoral distribution of national income.Indeed, the contribution of the agricultural sector to national incomedeclines while the contribution of manufacturing grows a lot, then stabilizesand even contracts. The importance of the services sector continues to risein the course of economic development. The industrial classification of thelabor force also undergoes changes during the structural transformationprocess. The role of agriculture as the principal employer diminishes whilethat of manufacturing first increases, and then tapers off. Services continueto absorb labor. The demand for agricultural workers keeps pace with thedemand for the product those workers produce. Since the demand foragricultural goods does not keep up with overall increases in consumption,the demand for agricultural workers falls off. At the same time, the demandfor industrial and service sector workers increases along with consumerdemand for their products. In addition, labor saving technological changetakes place in agriculture and manufacturing, while service sector productiontends to be labor intensive, thus absorbing large numbers of workers.Expansion of the service sector leads to the expansion of the overalleconomy in part because the sector is composed of industries that lubricatethe growth process. Indeed, the development of financial services enablessavings and borrowing to occur, leading to investment. The developmentof telecommunications services enables the spread of information. Transportationservices enable the movement of goods and services across a countryand between countries. Education and health services build up the stock ofhuman capital. Legal services and business accounting services reduce thecosts of transactions.While the structural transformation (and the rising importance of services)was identified by Simon Kuznets on the basis of the Western developmentexperience, LDCs have more or less followed the same pattern. India,the developing giant, is a case in point. Its phenomenal growth during the1990s is largely due to the growth of its services sector. According to theWorld Bank, during this time the services sector grew at an average annualrate of 9 percent, contributing some 60 percent of overall growth. 25 Growthhas been most pronounced in information technology and business processoutsourcing (BPO) services, followed by telecommunications, financial services,community services, and hotels and restaurants, each of which hasgrown faster than GDP.However, not all LDCs have followed this pattern. Exceptions areespecially clear in countries whose growth is due to a single commodity