What do you think Health Tourism is about?
By Julliah1985
@Julliah1985 (36)
Romania
September 6, 2010 11:46am CST
I have a special interest in Health Tourism. As the literature is poor on this subject I would love to hear some of your opinions.
1 response
@petersum (4522)
• United States
6 Sep 10
Perhaps you should enlighten us in exactly what is health tourism in your mind.
My only experience is that of an excellent heart hospital in Karachi, Pakistan that performs a full by-pass procedure for less than two thousand pounds sterling. It naturally attracts a lot of foreign "tourists" if that what you mean.
@Julliah1985 (36)
• Romania
6 Sep 10
From what I have read so far, health tourism is a complex term and there are many approaches on the subject. I tend to agree with the one that splits it in two big categories: illness tourism and wellness tourism. So, we are talking about tourist that travel to get well and those who travel to stay well; including in the first category the balneology and in the second, the spa and pampering. In my opinion the medical tourism (traveling for surgery), that you wrote about is either somewhere in the middle, or a third category. We can say medical tourism is consumed by people who travel to eastern countries (usually) for cheaper surgeries that can save their life or heal them or for cosmetic surgery that is not life threatening and it's more of a pampering thing.
This is health tourism for me and I know many think of medical tourism or balneary tourism, there for I'm interested to see if someone has different views.
