By Catherine Ford, Columnist, Troy Media
Medical tourism is one of those benign phrases that conjures up happy thoughts of a little liposuction while lolling about on a beach in some exotic port.
Nobody expects New Delhi-metallo-beta-lactamase, the newest so-called superbug as a souvenir. Referred to as NDM-1, the antibiotic-resistant bacteria contains a gene that resists treatment by medicine’s most powerful drugs. It has already killed one Belgian man while two Canadians — one in Alberta, the other in British Columbia who returned home from their medical adventure unwittingly carrying NDM-1 — were successfully treated.
Experts are predicting a 10-year-window before the bacteria becomes resistant to all treatment, a sort of medical End-of-Days firestorm. The British medical journal,
The Lancet, reported 37 cases of the infection so far, most picked up after medical procedures on the Indian subcontinent. With the kind of speed and hot denials seen when any lucrative business is threatened with bad publicity, officials in India are flatly denying any link and just as vehemently objecting to the gene being named for the capital city of India.
So much for benign tourism
Why Canadians would travel abroad for a medical procedure is no mystery. With a universal health system that separates the merely needy from the medically necessary, people get tired waiting for treatment they believe their right because of citizenship.
Few should criticize those who seek an end to daily pain. After watching a relative struggle to walk -- knowing that the system offers little hope of a hip replacement inside a year - it’s easy to understand why people who can afford a ticket elsewhere, do so.
India has become a destination of choice. English is the lingua franca, the country has competent and highly qualified doctors and hospitals, and clinics are set up to treat and pamper foreigners with money. All-in package tours are available, just name the operation and arrangements will be made. And, as a bonus, a little tourism after surgery can be arranged - should the patient feel up to it.
Unless a superbug drops hundreds of people in their tracks, it doesn't take a skeptic to predict that medical tourism will only grow more popular each year.
How big a deal is such tourism?
The third World Medical Tourism and Global Health Congress is slated for Los Angeles the end of September. The city of narcissists seems an appropriate place to hold such a conference, which expects up to 2,000 delegates from more than 60 countries, likely including the six top medical tourist destinations — Costa Rica, India, Israel, Korea, Mexico and Thailand.
And according to the medical tourism Web site, the favoured medical procedures are hip and knee replacements, anterior-cruciate ligament surgery (a common injury for athletes), root canals and spinal fusion.
Root canal procedure in India
I’m still trying to get my head around someone going all the way to India for a root canal procedure. Perhaps his or her dentist isn’t as pleasant as mine, or doesn’t use enough drugs to fell an elephant, causing the dreaded root canal procedure to be a foggy memory, even as it is being performed.
But my skeptical nature believes the bulk of medical tourists are women who can’t afford plastic surgery here and are willing to put their faces into the hands of an unknown doctor.
The good thing about the Canadian health care system is that it snaps into dramatic action in an emergency. The bad thing is that the prospective patient is not, as former U.S. President George W. Bush put it, “the decider.”
The power of money and position
It’s the system which decides who goes first, who goes last, and who goes anywhere at all. Should you be the designated caboose of the health care train, the temptation to take your needs and money elsewhere is compelling. When Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams needed heart surgery, he didn’t stand in line in St. John’s for his number to fall into the roulette wheel. He hied himself off to the U.S.
It’s his money, and he can spend it as he wishes although the political optics leaves a lot to be desired.
Going to the States for medical procedures is not new. Some justify this as a method of clearing up some of the backlog in Canada’s hospitals.
But between the rich who can buy immediate care and the poor who have no choice is a giant middle class who want what the rich can buy.
Want a cheaper face-lift? Go to India. Need some inexpensive liposuction? Go to Thailand. Don’t want to wait until hell freezes over for a joint replacement? Offshore surgeons and hospitals are ready and waiting.
And while bringing back an antibiotic resistant infection is not advertised as part of your medical tourism package, forewarned is forearmed.
