The Medical Tourist and a Political Economy of Care

Abstract

Medical tourism has gained prominence in academic, policy and business arenas in describing the growth in the number of people travelling outside of their home country to receive planned medical treatment, with the emphasis on the combination of addressing pressing health concerns with a leisure trip. This conceptual essay offers insights into how patients are being reconceptualised in a neo- liberal setting as medical tourists. In so doing it offers two key contributions. First it offers a deeper theorisation of trends in international healthcare through a political economy of care framework. This framework is not only focused on human interaction and experience but also on the political, economic and social space in which human life is played out. Second, it offers new insights into the exploration of human relationships within a market economy so that the medical tourist is seen with new eyes as a relational being

Early geography of the coronavirus disease outbreak in Nigeria

“…The basic idea about medical tourism is that certain people leave their country of origin to another country (destination) to access health care facilities based on different pull and push factors. Medical tourism though based on a market system of autonomy, independence and self-sufficiency (Bolton and Skountridaki 2017 ) has also been described as an elitist affair (Connell 2013 ), a situation in Nigeria where political office holders use taxpayers’ money to access health care facilities outside the shores of the country. This has been the post-colonial experience in the country where political office holders visit various health care providers across the globe for medical care and aid at the expense of improving state-owned facilities within the country.…”

"HEXAL Model" How It Can Collaborate With Health Service Providers and Travel Medicine

“…15,16 It is obvious that one of the most important sectors which are playing a tremendous role in medical tourism are the health care providers. 17 The biggest and most effecting health care providers all around the world are hospitals. "A hospital is a health care institution, providing patient treatment with specialized staff and equipment. "…”

The patient–doctor relationship in the transnational healthcare context

“…Scheper‐Hughes () similarly acknowledges that, amongst the medically included, viewed and treated abroad as ‘moral subjects and as suffering individuals’ (Scheper‐Hughes : 3), are those who rely on family or social networks for financial support to travel abroad; and those who take on debt in exchange for the possibility of being treated. It is hard to miss the extent of financial, physical and emotional vulnerability of some of those with the privilege of mobility (Bolton and Skountridaki ). Even those who travel for elective care and are not sick, often find themselves in great discomfort, stress, post‐operatively in pain and feeling in need of emotional support (see Ackerman's , ethnographic study of American cosmetic surgery patients in Costa Rica).…”

“…Other studies reveal that they may feel anxiety when in a foreign environment (Eissler 2010, Johnston et al 2012; homesick or may regret having the treatment abroad (Ackerman 2010). Foreignness, then, except for often implying a limited understanding of the destination's culture, language, legislation and healthcare system, also implies that one is undergoing treatment far from home, and the informal support of social networks, or the formal support of the state and its institutions (Bolton and Skountridaki 2017). Decision-making over one's health condition is then individualised, normalising a limited dependence on the state (Fineman 2004, Wallerstein 1974.…”

“…Consequently, a global elite would best be represented by those who are medically included at home and who, perhaps, also have the means to travel abroad, with those who can access 'elite' providers either at home or abroad being the most privileged. It becomes clear that transnational health care is provided within a neoliberal context of stark divisions and inequality, where principles of universal access to care are deemed irrelevant (Bolton and Skountridaki 2017), responsibility for care is individualised and new sub-divisions of the underprivileged are created (Table 1).…”