Patients without Borders: Understanding Medical Travel

Abstract

The rapidly growing medical travel industry has implications for the health sytems of both sending and receiving countries. This article outlines the political economy of the industry and the potential opportunities and disadvantages it poses for access, equity, and the right to health. Although the trade carries economic benefits for countries receiving foreign medical patients, it comes at a cost to the provision of public health, through distortions in the health workforce and the development of two-tiered health systems. Inequalities and failures in the health systems of sending countries largely drive the need to travel for care.

Key Words:

• health system
• medical travel
• trade in health services

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea Whittaker

ANDREA WHITTAKER is Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at the School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Australia. Current research supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (DP1094895) involves ethnographic work on cardiac and orthopedic surgery in Malaysia and Thailand, building on previous work on reproductive travel in Thailand.

Lenore Manderson

LENORE MANDERSON is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University, Australia. She is editor, with Carolyn Smith-Morris, of Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness (2010).

Elizabeth Cartwright

ELIZABETH CARTWRIGHT is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Hispanic Health Projects at Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho, USA. Her current work focuses on immigration and access to health care in binational communities in the western United States.