Medical tourism plays an important role in national revenue of many countries; This industry earns about 100 billion dollars for the governments each year. However, Tourism is not developed in Iran and it is in its initial paces. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Health recognized tourism-therapy in 2003. In addition, by doing this, rather than supporting tourism-therapy, the ministry mainly...

introduction : today, health tourism is an important and growing phenomenon in the world. iran has been one of the most active centers of health tourism in the region. due to the important role of the health tourism industry in the global economy and the capabilities of yazd province, iran, in this industry, the purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate barriers to the development of h...

BACKGROUND Medical tourism has attracted considerable interest within the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. Governments in the region tout the economic potential of treating foreign patients while several new private hospitals primarily target international patients. This analysis explores the perspectives of a range of medical tourism sector stakeholders in two LAC countries, Guatemal...

Background Many governments and health care providers worldwide are enthusiastic to develop medical tourism as a service export. Despite the popularity of this policy uptake, there is relatively little known about the specific local factors prospectively motivating and informing development of this sector. Objective To identify common social, economic, and health system factors shaping the deve...

BACKGROUND The Caribbean has the highest prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS outside sub-Saharan Africa, and a broad literature suggests an ecological association between tourism areas and sexual vulnerability. Tourism employees have been shown to engage in high rates of sexual risk behaviours. Nevertheless, no large-scale or sustained HIV prevention interventions have been conducted within the touris...

A trend emerging in recent years has been travel from industrialized nations to developing countries such as India and Thailand for purposes of undergoing medical procedures, a phenomenon we call medical tourism. Medical tourism offers the prospect of greatly reduced expenses for health care as well as other advantages such as reduced waiting times, but there are risks associated with seeking h...

introduction: given the high income that can be earned from health tourism, many people in private sectors are willing to enter this field. nevertheless, iran's share of this source of income is small since no active and successful bodies in health tourism market have been developed in private sector. the purpose of this paper is to identify the driving as well as the constraining factors of pr...

Medical tourism is a growing phenomenon with policy implications for health systems, particularly of destination countries. Private actors and governments in Southeast Asia are promoting the medical tourist industry, but the potential impact on health systems, particularly in terms of equity in access and availability for local consumers, is unclear. This article presents a conceptual framework...