I landed at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, India, at 3.20 am on November 28, 2023, on my way to the Asian Spine Hospital for a scheduled surgery the following day; took a taxi into the CBD, about 40km away, to Hotel Royal Emirates, nestled conveniently in the suburbs close to the hospital.
This is a hospital city, a modern health and wellness technopolis that attracts patients from around the globe, like bees to a beehive. Along the main streets, almost every other building is a health facility, advertised in flashy neon lights, and specialised in various medicare areas.
With about 546 hospitals, and a population of about 11 million in 2023, Hyderabad competes for medical tourists with other cities, notably New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.
Encouraged by medical tourism inflows of 183,000 in 2020, swelling to 304,000 in 2021, and raking in an income of $6 billion, the Indian government drew up its 2022 National Strategy and Roadmap for Medical and Wellness Tourism. This tourism is expected to grow by 20 per cent per year between 2023 and 2027, raking in a projected $35 billion. This is export in services, earning the country much-needed foreign exchange, to stabilise the rupee and bolster her economy.
Medical tourism, also known as health and wellness tourism, is largely cross-border travel that combines the search for treatment and leisure and healthy living. It is gaining traction as patients of all ages and both sexes seek accessible, affordable, quality universal healthcare, wherever they can find it.
The benefits for a country in attracting medical tourists are enormous. It provides jobs for healthcare workers at home so that trained healthcare workers do not have to leave home to look for jobs abroad. Incoming patients bring in badly needed foreign exchange, making the country a net exporter of health services thus bolstering the economy; foreign exchange earned may be used to subsidise health services at home.
The country will be pressured to continuously upgrade its medical infrastructure, continuously train its health workers to keep up with emerging medical technologies and procedures, and in this way stay ahead of the pack as a centre of excellence and the destination of choice.
Health and wellness tourism stimulates the growth of hotel, restaurant and hospitality and health insurance as well as pharmaceutical industries, fitness, sporting and gym services. It puts money in the pockets of taxi, tuk-tuk, boda boda and other transport operatives, including railway and airline sectors, enhancing local and international connectivity.
It increases the sale and consumption of food. The availability of quality medicare services increases the number of local patients, thus boosting domestic health tourism. The injection of forex and the circulation of money stimulate economic activities.
Competition among other emerging economies is rife. Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica and Jordan are in the race. A total of 500,000 foreign patients were treated in Turkey in 2018, raking in considerable foreign exchange earnings.
The drivers of medical and wellness tourism are diverse. Lack of affordable, accessible and quality services, long waiting times in the source countries and highly developed, dynamic services driven by modern Artificial Intelligence technologies in the destination countries.
Receiving countries market highly trained, technologically suave medical cadre who use minimally intrusive surgical procedures as opposed to open surgery.
Kenya tourist arrivals stood at 1.75 million in 2023 up from 1.48 million in 2022, raking in $2.06 billion in 2023 up from $1.66 billion in 2022. In 2021, travel tourism brought in $5.4 billion to Kenya’s GDP.
Kenya can grow into a medical and wellness tourism hub of excellence, not just in the East, Central and Horn of Africa regions but across the entire continent if she strengthens her medical and wellness infrastructure, continues to train highly skilled professionals specialising in various aspects of the profession, develop state of the art AI medical technologies, offers a combination of modern and traditional medicare and keeps the cost of service at affordable and attractive levels.
Medicare interventions that attract patients to venture abroad include but are not restricted to cancer, heart, organ transplant, orthopaedic, dental, eye, ear, throat, spine and urology surgeries and treatments, hip and knee joint replacements, prosthetics, or artificial limbs.
Other forms of treatment include stem and sickle cell, infertility, delivery, hair loss, gender reassignment, obesity, cosmetic surgery including beauty treatment such as breast and butt tacking or enhancement, skin disorder, sports injury and allergies.
Such services may be extended to include rehabilitation, offering services such as dialysis, care for the elderly to age gracefully and respectfully, guidance and counselling, mental health, and anti-drug addiction interventions, including addiction to prescription drugs, substance abuse and alcohol. Wellness tourism includes nature, eco, and community or cultural tourism, resorts, herbal treatments, spas, physiotherapy and massage parlours.
Medical and wellness tourism are not without risks. Patients may fall into the hands of quacks or people with low surgical skills, leading to infection, blood loss, longer stay in hospitals, sometimes leading to infection, disfigurement, collateral damage, chronic pain conditions and even disability. A patient may be a victim of cross-border infections. A patient should get referrals to reputable hospitals, surgeons and other medical staff.
Medical and wellness tourism is a catalyst and a shot in the arm for economic and industrial development. Factories may be set up for the manufacture of products consumed by the inflow of tourists. These include biological implants and body replacement parts such as hip and knee joints, prosthetic limbs, artificial eyes and teeth, ear implants to improve hearing, and metal brackets to support broken bones and the spine, which with more research will be replaced by biological implants.
Research institutions will be set up to extend the frontiers of medical science. Research in pharmaceuticals will bring new curative drugs onto the market and hitherto incurable diseases may be conquered. New vaccines against present and future disease outbreaks will be made available.
There is a need for oversight and standardization of health services. It is desirable to extend services offered by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations to all source and destination countries.
Kenya should be put on a path of becoming the destination of choice for medical and wellness tourism. It all begins with discussions within the Ministry of Health, where drafts of the Kenya National Strategy and Roadmap for Medical and Wellness Tourism are made. This will be presented to Parliament to be adopted as a Sessional Paper on Medical and Wellness Tourism Policy. With this legal foundation or backing, it is all systems go for a budgetary allocation and policy implementation.
Another approach is inviting Kenyans with medical expertise in the diaspora to train young surgeons in the use of emerging medical technologies and introducing these to university teaching, research and referral hospitals, to build capacity.
More can be done – offer government scholarships to medical students for specialised postgraduate training, forge partnerships with foreign hospitals, research centres for the sharing transfer and cross-pollination of skills and knowledge, hold medical clinics where certain specialised surgical procedures are conducted and observed by young medical staff in training, and establish regional and continental medicare centres such as the Africa Centre of Excellence in Spine Care.
Lastly, set up manufacturing capacity for biologic implants, expand the local manufacture of pharmaceuticals to stop imports, save foreign exchange and create jobs locally.
Chair of Council, Egerton University. [email protected]
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are mine and not necessarily those of the council or any other organ of Egerton University.