China promotes medical tourism

The Chinese government is making efforts to promote the country as a world-class medical tourism destination in its own right.  A big-time push is underway to grasp a share of the lucrative and growing healthcare travel market, one in which six million patients go abroad for treatment each year to the tune of an estimated $100 billion USD.  In 2013, a huge portion of these travelers are heading to Asian medical tourism hot spots like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, China is now selling patients all over the world on the country’s modern hospitals and technology, English-speaking doctors and surgeons, and excellence in both common and cutting-edge procedures that are popular with medical tourists like infertility treatments, stem-cell therapy, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and gamma knife radiosurgery for brain cancer, to name a few.

Major Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing – with their top-notch facilities and oftentimes Western-trained doctors – have taken serious steps towards becoming legitimate destinations in the competitive medical tourism marketplace.  The former, in fact, established the Shanghai Medical Tourism Products and Promotion Platform (SHMTPPP) which is an official government-supported medical tourism portal.  It is tasked with promoting China as a leading destination for advanced healthcare, and its website provides a wealth of information pertaining to China’s top hospitals, the most popular procedures with overseas patients, and costs.

Read more at Thailand Business News