Australia pushes for medical tourism
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A tourism lobby group says Australia should build a health travel sector in the same way it has developed education tourism. According to ABC News, the Australian Tourism Export Council has appointed a panel to look into the benefits and risks of offering international travellers beauty and spa treatments, counselling and some forms of elective surgery.
The council’s managing director, Matthew Hingerty, was quoted saying that other countries were already in the market.
“We believe that we can model the development of health tourism in the same way that we have built education tourism into a AU$10 billion (US$8.7 billion) annual industry for Australia,” Hingerty said. “It’s not so much the more invasive and catastrophic procedures but those routine elective procedures that are becoming increasingly expensive in places like the United States.”
Earlier this week Thailand also announced it planned to increase promotion of its medical tourism services.
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