Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Nowadays, it is very common to hear a loud speaker on minibuses roaring around Addis Ababa with big posters of patients’ photo requesting help from residents to cover costs for medical treatments abroad, which they could not cover by themselves. This is more evident around churches and mosques during holidays.
Children, university students, youngsters, and many more are observed on major junctions of the city with their unfortunate medical condition requesting people to lend them hand.
One such inopportune person, is Natan Birru, 27, a teacher from Wollo in Amhara Region.
After the Tikur Anbessa General Specialized Hospital medical board referred him for further treatment abroad, he had to fly to India for a kidney transplant, for which he was asked by the hospital abroad to pay at least ETB100,000.
“That was an amount which I have never dreamt of having, it is really quite a lot,” says Natan.
Desperate to come up with the money, he and his friends have to move around the different parts of the country since April 2012. His parents also have to sell their cattle to help their son. After a year and six months of struggle, he was able to secure the money. Now he is set to travel to India this month, October 2013.
Medical tourism, the act of travelling abroad in search of health care, has grown significantly in recent decades with an increasing number of people seeking medical services outside their home country. Many patients are travelling great distances to obtain medical care.
According to different studies, travelling overseas in search of increased health and well-being is not a new phenomenon. The earliest form of health tourism is said to date back to the Neolithic and Bronze ages in Europe when people travelled to distant territories to visit mineral and hot springs. By the 18th and 19th centuries, spa towns, especially in the south of France, became popular destinations for people living in the north of Europe searching for sun and an escape from the cold weather at home. In the late 19th century patients from less developed countries would travel to medical centers in Europe and the United States for diagnostics and treatment procedures not available in their own countries. Although travelling for health care is nothing new, the modern dynamics of medical tourism evolved in to what it is now in the past 10 to 15 years. And the trend was global.
The number of foreign hospital representatives in Addis Ababa is increasing significantly to address a growing demand of medical travel in the country. Five years ago, the number of these foreign hospital representative offices has been not more than three but now it has reached about eleven.
The Thailand based Bumrungrad International Hospital was among the pioneers in opening a representative office here in Addis, six years ago. Accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI), a commission which was launched in 1999 after a growing demand to effectively evaluate quality and safety of medical services, the hospital gives many medical services which are not available here in Ethiopia. Cancer prevention, Orthopaedic, neurology and Urology are some of the services the hospital provides. For comprehensive check up, without including travel and accommodation, customers have to pay USD 500 to USD 600 for the hospital.
During the first three years when the representative office was operational, it was sending only 60 people in a year on average for treatment, according to Getu Gizaw, manager of the representative office. However, in the last two years, the office has sent 1,082 people to Thailand.
“The number of people who look for foreign hospital services is significantly growing,” Getu told EBR.
Operational two years ago for the same purpose, the representative office for the Dubai based Rak Hospital, is one of the offices in Addis Ababa facilitating the services.
These offices facilitate the travel for those who are referred from the local hospitals to further treatment abroad like Natan.
Rak Hospital also gives medical services which are not currently available in Ethiopia like Orthopedics and Joint replacement, Neurosurgery and Spine, interventional Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, Laparoscopic and Bariatric Surgery. Based on their treatment history, people who go to Rak Hospital will pay an amount that ranges from USD300 to USD20,000 in average.
There are also representative offices of Indian, Turkish, Saudi Arabian and South African hospitals in the capital.
“Most of our customers are people who want to travel for general checkup and stay there for a vacation,” says Getu. “Such clients have doubts on the quality of the local health services and prefer to get checked abroad.”
“The demand from both kinds of customers is growing; patients who are referred from the local hospitals to get treatment abroad as well as people who want to check their health status,” says Meron Bekele (PhD) manager of Rak Hospital representative office in Addis Ababa . According to her, about 240 people travel to Dubai every year for such purpose through her office.
Demeke Yanko, 44, a business man, travels to Thailand every year for medical checkup. Even if it is costly, he does not want to substitute the service he gets abroad with that of local hospitals.
“Life is priceless and I have to spend any thing to keep my health,” he told EBR.
Sometimes he takes his wife and children with him, on his trips, for a vacation along with the medical checkup.
By Yetneberk Tadele
