Medical Tourism

Tourism has long been associated with improved health, resulting in a boom of spas, yoga and rejuvenation treatments. Medical tourism itself is a more recent example of niche tourism, with increasing numbers of people travelling abroad in search of cosmetic enhancement and solutions to various serious medical conditions often by surgery. "Medical Tourism" looks at the background and rise of health tourism, new emerging facets of the sector, and examines how medical tourism benefits local health care providers, economies and the tourism industry as a whole. It offers a unique overview of an emerging component of the tourist industry and a distinct and controversial element of health provision.

1. Introduction: Patients without Borders; 2. The Antiquity of Health Tourism; 3. Mind and Matter: Health Tourism or Cosmetic Surgery?; 4. The Rise of Medical Tourism; 5. Medical Tourism and the New Asia; 6. Marketing Medical Tourism; 7. The Economics of Medical Tourism; 8. Extremes, Ethics and Inequality; 9. But Is It Tourism?; 10. Global Health.