Ten years ago, medical tourism usually referred to cosmetic, plastic, or elective surgery. Increasingly, however, patients are receiving life-saving medical operations such as heart surgery. Hip replacements, fertility work, and cancer treatments have also become quite popular in recent years. In addition, some medical and dental destinations offer procedures that are unavailable in certain Western countries. Hip resurfacing, for example, was only recently approved by the US Food & Drug Administration, even though it had been available in India for quite some time. We don’t always recommend signing up for experimental treatments, but certain medical conditions warrant exploring any and all available options.
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Christopher Sanford, a Seattle travel-medicine doctor, spends most of his days helping globe-trotting travelers stay healthy.
Before they head off to less-developed countries, he advises them on everything from vaccinations to avoiding malaria. If travelers return with any nasty bodily souvenirs, Sanford helps cure them.
Yet more and more, he focuses on getting travelers to be careful on the road — literally. “The biggest threat in the developing world is not infectious diseases. It’s car crashes,” said Sanford.
Tempted to ride on the roof of a bus in India? Or to rent a motorbike and zip around an Indonesian island? Think twice, says Sanford, and take all the safety precautions you can. Wear a helmet on bicycles or motorcycles. Use seat belts, if you’re lucky enough to find vehicles that have them. And ride inside the bus.
Vehicle accidents cause about 25 percent of the deaths of visitors to the developing world, says Sanford, and only 1 percent is from infectious diseases. (Most of the rest of the deaths are from heart attacks, strokes, drowning, falls from heights, plus homicide and suicide.) Read the rest of this entry »
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