Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

84 ● Medical Tourism in Developing CountriesSri Lanka, and Nigeria. Some destination countries also have satellite linksto foreign institutions (such as Jordan’s King Hussein Medical Center,linked to the Mayo Clinic in the United States for consultations andtele-education).Dubai Healthcare City undertook the single most ambitious effort atforeign collaboration. Its foreign collaborators include Harvard University(Harvard Medical School Dubai Center Institute for Postgraduate Educationand Research), the Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical International, theDr. Sulaiman al-Habib Medical Center in Saudi Arabia, Johnson andJohnson, AstraZeneca (this world’s fifth largest pharmaceutical firm plansto relocate its Gulf office to Dubai Healthcare City), and Novo Nordisk(also plans to relocate its Gulf office from Denmark to Dubai).The medical tourism industry also collaborates with private foundations,especially in the West. Cuba is engaged in technology transfer negotiationswith private sector in China and India, and as a result of cooperation, itsproducts have been patented in Canada, China, and various Europeancountries. Also, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been generousin the LDC health-care sector in general, providing grants to local firms todevelop, for example, a malaria vaccine. 76 In addition to the private sector,the medical tourism industry collaborates also with governmental organizationsin foreign countries. Bharat Biotech in India is collaborating with theCenters for Disease Control in Atlanta and the U.S. National Institutes ofHealth on development of a roto virus vaccine. 77 The benefits to the UnitedStates are great, as production costs are lower in India than in the UnitedStates; the benefits to the domestic industry are also great, in the form ofemployment, technology transfer, income, et cetera.Private Foreign InvestmentIn their assessment of medical tourism in India, Gupta, Goldar, and Mitrasaid that the first priority for growth must be to increase the number offoreign patients coming to India and the second, to increase foreign capitalor the foreign presence in India’s health sector. 78 Such funding from internationalsources takes place both, in the private and public sectors, andfrom the private and public sectors. Private foreign investment comes fromthe private sector and overwhelmingly takes place in the private sector ofdeveloping countries. Bilateral and multilateral international sources transfermoney into both public and private sectors in developing countries (thelatter is discussed in the next section).As noted in chapter 2, direct foreign investment has a stimulating roleto play in medical tourism (and health and tourism in general). It brings