Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the burgeoning industry and practice of medical tourism in the context of India, exploring the growing tensions and complexities surrounding the transnational flows of individuals seeking health services across the globe.

Paper long abstract:

Medical tourism links two areas that have long inspired the anthropological imagination; however it also underscores new trends and patterns of power and inequality emerging across the globe. Widely promoted as 'First World Care at Third World Prices', it has been estimated that medical tourism as a global trade is worth US$60 billion. Although promoted as a rational economic development strategy for countries such as India, beyond the burgeoning sanitary corporate hospitals advertised as 'islands of excellence' are populations facing critical health issues that are unable to access this level of treatment. Additionally, government subsidies, public-private partnerships and the establishment of medical visas to facilitate the entry of medical tourists into India bring about questions of ownership of the corporate hospitals catering to the medical tourists, the health professionals often siphoned from the public-system and, more widely, health services themselves.

From international trade agreements through to national and state policies, the economic impetus for Third World countries with the capacity to cater for health-seeking travellers is increasing. The demand creating this industry is premised upon deteriorating social and economic equity within health systems abroad such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Consequently, this paper questions whether medical tourism is a physical manifestation of the increasing gaps in equity between the poor and the non-poor, transversing borders, where those with stronger foreign exchange currencies can still gain access to care, albeit through the further entrenchment and widening of inequity.

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