This trend is a U-turn compared with the previous trends, when well-to-do patients from the developing countries were travelling to the West to obtain quality health care.
The trend has reversed due to a combination of factors, including the ease and affordability of international travel, steep healthcare costs in industrialized countries, favourable currency exchange rates, the outburst of online business and communication, and the coming out of high quality, advanced health care services in a number of non-Western nations all around the world.
Because of excessively high healthcare costs in the USA, millions of Americans cannot afford the health care they need since they are either uninsured, uninsurable or underinsured. Neither wanting to bring upon themselves a crushing debt nor give up medical procedures, many patients choose medical travel to find health care within their means.
In Canada and Europe, the problem is the long waiting times due to overburdened healthcare infrastructure. Waiting for many months for orthopaedic or cardiac operations is a sad reality in the UK and other regions.
Moreover, private health care services are also very expensive in many European countries, which is another obstacle to patients searching for quality care. Consequently, a lot of people from Europe, like Americans, go abroad.
The emergence of medical tourism has also been determined by substantial prosperity of many westerners. The exchange rate favours the stronger currencies of the Dollar and Euro against the currencies of most countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In addition to this, developments in many non-Western countries also encouraged the growth of medical tourism. Many non-Western countries boast advanced medical delivery systems, where services and facilities are based on the Western model, equipment is up-to-date and of the highest standards, and many of the physicians were trained or worked in the United States or Europe.
Medical tourism is not a new trend. Travelling abroad for medical, dental and cosmetic surgery procedures in search for quality treatment for lower costs is a phenomenon that has lasted for many years until now. However, only recently, health providers and national governments, seeing the growing medical tourism as an important source of income, have begun to purposefully plan and develop medical infrastructure to cater to this trend.
As a result, all these factors together have led to the appearance of medical alternatives to Westerners facing huge costs and long waiting times in their home countries.
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