Medical tourism creating difficulties in Thailand – is medical tourism responsible tourism or exploitation?
I wrote a while back (almost 3 years ago actually) I wrote about how a friend of mine ended up with a nasty infection after visiting a dirty hospital in rural Thailand. Her arm is permanently disfigured as a result so it must have been serious.
Several people replied that healthcare in Thailand is actually excellent and my friend’s experience must have been the exception rather than the norm. It seems that we need to differentiate between private hospitals and public ones in Thailand. Since my friend was nowhere near a city I’m guessing she ended up in a public hospital, probably the only one anywhere nearby.
This article explains that public hospitals don’t have enough doctors because private hospitals near expensive hotels pay much better than public hospitals. In one day at a private hospital a doctor might make three times more than she would working 5 days in a public hospital.
The result is that while some hospitals in Thailand provide excellent care, public hospitals even in major cities like Bangkok (and you can imagine it would be even worse the further you get from a city especially since people are willing to travel hours to get tot he public hospital in Bangkok) are a bit more trying:
The outpatient waiting room looks a bit like Grand Central Station. On a very hot day. With no air conditioning.Hundreds of patients are squeezed onto old wooden benches. Many more are slumped in wheelchairs or lying on gurneys.
Malai says she has come in from the district of Phetchaburi because she feels sick and her legs hurt. She also has hepatitis. She left her home at 3 a.m. to travel three hours to the hospital.
It reminds me of this story from a while back – I linked to one article about Canadians getting transplants in India from poor people willing to sell their organs. It seems that medical tourism is great for the tourists but there’s definitely some controversy over how good it is for the locals.
What do you think? Is medical tourism responsible tourism or exploitation?
And no, if I needed a kidney or whatever, I wouldn’t really care about the answer to my question.
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