Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

Plastic Surgery is Not Peanuts ● 33income. The higher the multiplier coefficient, the greater the amount ofadditional employment or income created by an increase in tourism expenditure.In typical LDCs, each dollar spent by tourists creates $2 to $3 ofoutput in the economy (so the coefficients range between 2 and 3 51 ).The UNWTO claims that the tourism multiplier has a large growthpotential for the following reasons. 52 First, tourism is consumed where it isproduced, usually in conjunction with other products and services. Second,since tourism is labor intensive, a broad range of workers receive its incomeand, in turn, spend it in the local economy. Third, given tourism’s diversity,the scope for broad participation is large, leading to development of theinformal sector.The net effect of tourism multipliers on the macroeconomy may belower than expected due to leakages associated with the dependent natureof tourism.Medical Tourism and DependencyDependency models were popular in the development literature during the1970s. 53 Although many varieties existed, the common denominator wasthe unequal nature of the economic relationships between MDCs andLDCs. Such theories drew on imperialist economic relations, but wereapplied to the post-colonial period, especially in countries where economicindependence did not follow political independence. The key concepts weredominance and dependence, as the summary provided by Dudley Seersshows: foreign capital and transfer of technology play a negative role in thereceiving region; the internal policies of the receiving region are inconsequentialin comparison to the power of the international forces so theremust be strong government intervention; there are no benefits in the formof development (as measured by an improvement in the quality of life) inthe less developed country; the role of international capitalism is great ingenerating the expansion of industrial capitalist countries while underdevelopingthe receiving regions; there is blocked development in the receivingregion. 54 In other words, dependency prevents development and industrializationexcept of a distorted kind. In contrast to those that view the negativeeffects of trade among regions of differing levels of development as insignificant,adherents of dependency theories claim that those effects are at theforefront of all intraregional and extraregional economic relations. Theyfurther claim that the less developed (usually agricultural) regions are at adisadvantage when exchanging their product with the more developed(nonagricultural) regions. The key to this analysis is the nature of theregion’s output, namely, the region’s economic base, and the consequent