Have you ever heard of medical tourism?
Medical tourism which also called as health tourism defines the practice of traveling over international countries for healthcare needs and motives. It sometimes being referred as healthcare providers traveling over international orders to fulfill healthcare needs and purposes.
Medical tourism is growing rapidly nowadays and actively being promoted in many countries such as Greece, Jordan, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia.
Currently it becomes a common trend to see people flying to other countries to receive medical treatment or for any healthcare purposes. Medical tourism becomes a booming business as a particular country or region might not provide the treatment that is needed by a person. The other popular factor is the difference between treatment price between countries where a person has the chance to get lower price in some countries for the same treatment in other countries which charge higher treatment cost.
People might go for medical tourism due to some reasons such as:
- Some medical procedures and treatment are less expensive abroad.
- The quality of healthcare facilities abroad has improved a lot in recent years.
- Going abroad may be the only way to get certain treatments.
- You can tie your health care needs to a well deserved vacation.
Although provides many advantages, medical tourism also involves some risks. For example there are infectious disease in some countries such as Malaysia and Thailand which are different to Europe and other regions. This situation could lead to different views, perspectives and treatments. Other similar risk is the possibility for misdiagnose as different cultures and lifestyle results in different perception such as HIV, TB or other diseases which are defined as “common” in particular region and lifestyle but referred as “rare” in other regions.