Medical tourism: how to control it?

Seek treatment abroad and enjoy the benefits of another health system is a practice becoming more widespread. In Europe, a proposed directive to regulate this new type of tourism.

Anne Laude

Previously, travel formed the youth today, some give a second. Indeed, journeys are now organized so that travelers receive care abroad. This phenomenon of medical tourism exceeds the requirements of spa treatments, because these are "travel for health care" to avoid long waiting lists, to benefit care prohibited in its country of origin or cheaper . In all cases, patients seeking to take advantage of the existing system of care in another state. Recognizing the problem, the European Commission is trying to legislate. We will see what measures it recommends having outlined the contours of the phenomenon. 

A recent example has made the headlines. On the night of Saturday 6 to Sunday 7 September, a 59-year-old woman gave birth to triplets in a Paris hospital. The mother has received a donation of oocytes in Vietnam. Why go so far? Because in France, oocyte donation is framed by the bioethics laws that impose a voluntary donation, anonymous and free. The recipient must suffer from infertility or pathological risk of transmitting a serious disease to the child. In addition, the couple must be of childbearing age, ie that the mother must be under 40 years. In France, couples wait 6 to 60 months before benefiting from this donation. Thus, going to Vietnam, the mother, on the one hand, benefited from more flexible conditions surrounding the gift, and on the other hand, won a few months.

The concept of tourism, associated with pleasure, therefore significantly changed. Increasingly, tourism is very specific purposes, whether cultural, scientific and medical today. Is not there some irony to involve tourism to something a priori binding?

In any case, the phenomenon is not ...