Category Archives: Reports,Features, Statistics

Mexico Assisted Living Provides Assisted Living Services in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Posted on August 19, 2014 | Comments Off on Mexico Assisted Living Provides Assisted Living Services in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico  :

Mexico Assisted Living provides a new opportunity for senior people, who live in America and Canada to spend assisted living vacation in the appealing beach resort, Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. They will be able to combine pleasure with beneficial activities to improve their health at very low costs.

More and more people from Canada and America choose Puerto Vallarta as a Mexican top destination for assisted living vacation or retirement due to a variety of reasons. This place is recognized as especially appealing dental and medical tourism destination because of the professional doctors and dentists and affordable medical procedures that cost about a tenth part of what they would have to pay for the same treatment in their own countries.

This explains the fact that people prefer to live in Mexico after their retirement, when they will no longer worry about the expenses they will pay for caregivers and doctors. Mexico Assisted Living Company offers people a room with all the needed amenities in it and appropriate care for just $3000 per month. The rooms feature an ocean panorama and provide patients with the opportunity to combine natural and medical treatment, taking advantage of sun and various water activities.

The customers can choose between various low cost procedures offered at Mexico Assisted Living. A massage that continues for an hour costs less than $20, while having a lunch in a great restaurant, located on the very beach, will cost people between 10 and 20 dollars.

Mexico Assisted Living Company offers 24 hour care, nurses and a doctor, who live on site and are always available to help, two swimming pools, air conditioning, direct access to the beach, and much more. Patients are able to enjoy TV with more than 60 channels and Internet in their rooms and use their medical alert necklaces at any time to signalize for emergency, resting assured that the caregivers will immediately respond. There are wheelchairs available in the whole community and the activity director schedules daily activities for people.

Adults may meet in the large common areas to share their stories and make new friends, or just to interact with other patients and to not feel alone. The company offers also transportation to different medical or dental appointments. Three meals per day are included and the customers can visit Tiki Bar.

The company offers several services to meet the needs of tourists. These are vacation stay, senior vacations, where senior people can choose to stay for a period of a few days to a month or so, and assisted living with high quality care and low prices, with all inclusive and where doctors and nurses are reachable 24 hours a day.

All, who are interested in this opportunity, can visit http://www.mexicoassistedliving.com for more information.

source: http://www.digitaljournal.com / Digital Journal / Home> Press Release /Puerto Vallarta, Mexico / ReleaseWire / August 15th, 2014

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Posted in Others, Reports,Features, Statistics, Uncategorized

Fertility tourism and the new human trafficking

Posted on August 17, 2014 | Comments Off on Fertility tourism and the new human trafficking

Fertility tourism is a growing global industry, bringing in over $400 million a year in India alone. For the right price, people can buy IVF treatments, donated eggs and sperm along with a surrogate mother. The clients are often white and rich. The suppliers pressed into service are often neither.

In Margaret Attwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, a class of women exist solely to give birth to other’s children. Their bodies are no longer their own, but a commodity in perpetual servitude to richer, ruling classes.

This fantasy is more real than imagined when you consider the case of Gammy, born with Down Syndrome, separated from his twin and left to live in poverty with his surrogate mother, Pattharamon Janbua, in Thailand. Janbua has become the 21st Century Handmaid, the face of impoverished fertility offered at a price to the rich and most often white customers.

Gammy and Janbua’s case highlights the inequality of fertility tourism for what it is: the new face of human trafficking.

As always, the most powerful people will always be those with the most money but the question must be asked: what are they buying and is it ethical? By using money and vulnerability as a means to coerce women into exploitative service, fertility tourism is an abuse of power that reduces the trafficked from people into produce.

Based on the UN’s definition of human trafficking, fertility tourism often results in human trafficking by recruiting people by through coercion, twisting power and vulnerability and giving payments that result in physical exploitation.

According to Janbua, already a mother, the surrogacy fees promised were 350,000 baht (A$11,669) which far exceeded the 20,000 baht (A$666) she and her husband struggled to live off every month. Janbua entered into the agreement by the force of poverty, telling reporters “my husband agreed because we didn’t have money to pay our debt”. She also claims she has not been fully paid.

She’s not alone.

As an industry that relies on the labour of women, it doesn’t always treat them well. In India, women’s groups are campaigning against deceptive agents pressing young women into service and signing contracts they can’t read. Many surrogate mothers are separated from their families to live in quarantined hostels with other women while others go into seclusion fearing social shame. There are cases of women dying during childbirth. This is the reality hidden from the pristine white clinics and smiling hosts promoted on websites.

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On surrogacy forums, where questions about personal experience are continually punctuated by offers of assistance by surrogacy agents eager to broker a new deal, people talk about God’s will helping them have a baby instead of their wallets. Surrogate mothers become nameless broodmares spoken of as objects and not individuals, reduced to a sum of parts from their womb to their donated eggs. One woman advises people to inspect the surrogate mothers because if they’re from the Ukraine they’ll be contaminated by Chernobyl and that “if you see the [Indian] surrogate mother consider yourself lucky. Maybe better not to see.”

The implications of it “better not to see” a surrogate mother or to reduce them to produce potentially spoiled by nuclear accident speaks volumes of how easily people can disregard others when money is involved.

The popularity of fertility tourism shows that the world can still devise unique ways to literally sell a woman’s body to the highest bidder. As with all forms of human trafficking, we must find a way to look past our mania for cheap labour and look to the real cost of what we are buying.

This is no way to start a life and it’s no way to respect the lives of others.

Source: SBS Australia
source: http://www.eturbonews.com / eTN Global Travel Industry News / by Amy Gray / August 05th, 2014

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Posted in Fertility Tourism, Reports,Features, Statistics

The tooth about dental tourism

Posted on August 16, 2014 | Comments Off on The tooth about dental tourism

As my auto rickshaw wound through the smoggy streets of New Delhi I leaned my head out the side door and spat a mouthful of blood into the gutter.

Two wisdom teeth had just been pulled from my gums and I was feeling surprisingly good.

It was 2009 and I was half way through a six-month India adventure.

A sharp pain at the back of my jaw had been getting progressively worse so I decided to see a dentist while passing through New Delhi.

With no idea where to go I phoned up the New Zealand Embassy in India and was recommended Dr Ghandi’s clinic on a street called Mahatma Gandhi Marg.

With a name like that I felt in safe hands.

X-rays showed two wisdom teeth needed extracting and the next day I was back in the chair getting local anesthetic injected into my gums.

Thirty minutes later I walked out the door with a bag of painkillers and my two wisdom teeth in an envelope. The whole procedure cost about $200.

A few years later I had the remaining two wisdom teeth removed while travelling through Cambodia for an even cheaper sum of $50 each.

Medical tourism or health tourism is an increasingly popular option for people wanting to take a holiday and get medical treatment at the same time, all the while saving sometimes considerable sums of money.

Dental holidays would have to be the most common form of medical tourism with destinations such as Thailand and the Philippines proving popular with Kiwis.

The clinics I went to in India and Cambodia were professional, hygienic and affordable.

But needless to say there are numerous risks associated with undergoing medical treatment in a foreign land.

The internet is full of medical tourism information and first hand accounts of people’s experiences.

Some stories recall seamless, cost effective operations and others, nightmare scenarios. Each person will have differing opinions about the safety of medical tourism so carry out your due diligence and weigh up the associated risks.

The New Zealand Dental Association takes a rather pessimistic view towards dental tourism.

New Zealand dentists are increasingly being asked to “pick up the pieces” after overseas dental treatment goes wrong, it says. An advisory on its website outlines the dangers associated with getting dental work done overseas. And the list is long.

Some considerations include:

Can you verify your overseas dentist’s qualifications?

Are you happy meeting your dentist only briefly before treatment?

Is the procedure right for you?

Are the dental materials and equipment the best available?

Who will manage any necessary follow-up care?

Is price your only concern?

Can you be confident that you will not be exposed to the Hepatitis or HIV viruses?

Flying after surgery increases the risk of complications.

Dentistry is both invasive and irreversible.

Now, I may be a bit of a sceptic but I think the association has a vested interest in keeping as much dental business in New Zealand as possible.

Mull the warnings over, do thorough research and draw your own conclusions. Personally, I would do it all over again given the chance.

– Sunday Star Times

source: http://www.stuff.co.nz / Travel / by Joseph Anthony / August 10th, 2014

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Posted in Dental Tourism, Reports,Features, Statistics

Ontario vulnerable to legal challenge because of medical tourism: nursing leader

Posted on August 12, 2014 | Comments Off on Ontario vulnerable to legal challenge because of medical tourism: nursing leader

Allowing international patients to pay for health care sets Ontario up for a challenge by Canadians who want to do the same, warns the head of the Registered Nurses Association.

Doris Grinspun, head of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, says the recent practice of some hospitals to accept foreign patients for profit may lead to demands by Canadians to be allowed to pay for prompter medical care.

Doris Grinspun, head of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, says the recent practice of some hospitals to accept foreign patients for profit may lead to demands by Canadians to be allowed to pay for prompter medical care.

If the province doesn’t order hospitals to stop practising medical tourism, it risks a court challenge over the right to pay out-of-pocket for health care, the head of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario warns.

“If you seek out people from other countries to pay for health care here, you are inviting a lawsuit from someone in Canada who wants to pay,” Doris Grinspun suggested.

Among Ontario hospitals that treat patients from abroad are Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University Health Network.

Medical tourism is a threat to medicare  because it creates a double standard that could see well-heeled Canadians demand to pay out-of-pocket to jump the queue and get quick treatment, Grinspun said.

Ontario could find itself in a similar position to that of British Columbia, which is headed to court this fall, she said. The western province is facing a legal challenge  over patient access to private surgery centres.

Not only would Ontario be stuck with big legal bills if there is a court challenge here, but patients might end up with a weakened health system because resources were being drawn away to treat international patients, Grinspun said.

In a written statement, Health Minister Eric Hoskins said international patients can be treated in Ontario hospitals only if “zero public dollars” are used, domestic patients are not displaced, and any monies made are reinvested into improving care for Ontarians.

An ongoing ministry review is looking at ways to strengthen these rules, he said.

“There is no more ardent defender of our universal public health care system than our government, and Ontario patients should have full confidence that their hospitals have their care as their very top priority,” Hoskins said.

As part of a pilot program, Sunnybrook has so far this year treated three foreign patients for cancer, said hospital president Craig Duhamel. Two were from the Caribbean and one was from Europe.

The hospital has made about $100,000 so far, enough to cover the cost of the insurance for the international program, Duhamel said.

“At this point, we are breaking even, but if we treat others, we will be able to invest whatever revenue we generate, minus expenses, back into the provision of patient care for Ontarians,” he said.

Over at the University Health Network, 75 international patients have so far been treated this year. Of those, 31 have been from Libya and the rest from the Caribbean, Middle East and Africa.

These international patients have received orthopedic, cardiac and cancer care, and the University Health Network has taken in $4.5 million in revenue.

Dr. Nizar Mahomed, managing director of “UHN International,” said he does not consider what the University Health Network is doing to be medical tourism.

“This is about people who cannot get access to care” in their home countries,” he said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with two-tier (medicine).”

In an article that he co-authored in the online health policy magazineHealthyDebate.ca, Nizar explains that patients from Libya were wounded in that country’s civil war and that their care at UHN is paid for by the Libyan government.

Grinspun said it is disturbing that “medical tourism experiments” have been concocted out of the public eye and with no public debate. In an open letter to Premier Kathleen Wynn earlier this month, she urged the province to ban the practice.

Before becoming deputy health minister, Dr. Bob Bell was president of the University Health Network. In an interview  last April, he made no apologies for the fact that the hospital was treating international patients and said plans were being made to do more of it.

But in an interview the following month, immediately before starting his new job as deputy minister, Bell was more cautious:

“I think it’s fair to say that the position I have at UHN and the position I have as the deputy, they would be different, obviously. I don’t like the term health-care tourism or medical tourism. I think it degrades the concept that we are trying to give good care. It has been something that has been one of the areas of strategic focus at UHN, but it is not something I will anticipate will be a focus at the ministry.”

source: http://www.thestar.com / The  Star.com / Home> Life – Health & Wellness / by Theresa Boyle / Tuesday – August 05th, 2014

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Posted in Reports,Features, Statistics

New initiative for medical tourism unveiled

Posted on August 10, 2014 | Comments Off on New initiative for medical tourism unveiled
Tom R. Skancke, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, speaks with the Review-Journal editorial board on Monday April 28, 2014. (Mark Damon/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Tom R. Skancke, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, speaks with the Review-Journal editorial board on Monday April 28, 2014. (Mark Damon/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Most destinations that position themselves as medical tourism centers have world-class health-care facilities that Southern Nevada would never be able to match.

But that hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of a group of organizations that sees economic opportunity for the region if it capitalizes on its medical tourism assets instead of lamenting its weaknesses.

Instead of recruiting medical specialists from places that those experts aren’t likely to leave, local leaders instead will focus on local attributes and redefine their mission.

The Las Vegas Regional Strategic Plan for Medical and Wellness Tourism was unveiled Wednesday evening at a meeting of health care and tourism professionals, organizations and nonprofit groups. The event was sponsored by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, Las Vegas Health, Education, Advocacy and Leadership in Southern Nevada and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Medical tourism is considered a lucrative economic engine, estimated to generate $50 billion to $60 billion a year. Recent reports indicate that the industry will grow to $100 billion a year in the next decade and that the combination of medical and wellness tourism could eclipse $500 billion annually.

A handful of Southern Nevada medical specialists have built practices around serving wealthy clients that jet into Las Vegas from anywhere in the world to receive treatment.

“This is about taking what our community already does well and collaborating to forge new and unexpected economic opportunities in medical and wellness tourism,” said Tom Skancke, president and CEO of the Global Economic Alliance, an economic development advocate.

So instead of wooing the world’s best medical specialists, Southern Nevada should market its medical training infrastructure, its menu of wellness offerings — including more than 45 world-class resort spas — and its team of service industry professionals that can steer prospective clients to medical specialists few people know are based in Las Vegas.

Wednesday’s announcement, attended by 100 people in the medical and tourism industries, was made at the 5-year-old Oquendo Surgical Training Center, a facility with surgical stations and telecommunications systems that enable groups to view and learn medical procedures.

A summary of the plan was presented by its co-authors, Douglas Geinzer, CEO of Las Vegas HEALS; Stowe Shoemaker, dean of UNLV’s College of Hotel Administration; Michael Vannozzi, director of public policy for Global Economic Alliance; and Cheryl Smith, medical and wellness tourism manager for the Convention and Visitors Authority.

Thousands of people travel to Las Vegas for medical conferences at which they learn about new procedures that can be demonstrated for large groups.

The report notes that wellness and prevention are key components to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and Southern Nevada’s spa industry is well-suited to serve the wellness tourism market.

“I think there is an assumption that wellness is only defined by things like cholesterol check-ups and executive physicals,” said Smith, co-author of the report.

“That’s the medical aspect of it. But there’s a proactive side, prevention,” she said. “Our spas contribute to overall health and well-being, stress reduction and destination for visitors to experience wellness differently then perhaps they can at home.”

The Affordable Care Act has placed a heavy emphasis on electronic medical records, and Southern Nevada’s high concentration of ultra-secure cloud and data storage facilities has attracted new firms and talent to the region.

The plan also envisions wellness travel agents and medical concierges that can identify resources and introduce Las Vegas’ list of client offerings.

Las Vegas has niche disciplines within the health-care industry — such as fertility, plastic surgery, age management, bariatric and orthopedic surgery, diagnostic imaging and dental — which attract both domestic and international travelers to Southern Nevada.

Organizers also hope to position Southern Nevada as a location for clinical trials. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development awarded a Knowledge Fund grant to UNLV to start a Quantitative Clinical Trials Center at the university.

Experts say that if private and academic partners can build capacity for clinical trials, it should drive additional visitation to the area by patients seeking innovative experimental treatments.

The report issued Wednesday was developed by the founding partners after meetings that began more than a year ago with 147 businesses and organizations.

“Although we have made significant progress over the past 10 years,” the report said, “the medical and wellness tourism market in Las Vegas has yet to take off. Our region needs a more robust strategy to capture a healthy slice of the medical and wellness tourism market and after more than a year of meetings and outreach, the project partners have developed a strategy that begins to address the systemic issues that are holding our medical and wellness tourism economy from realizing its full potential.”

source: http://www.reviewjournal.com / RJ / by Richard N. Vellotta – Las Vegas Review  – Journal / Home> Business> Tourism / August 06th, 2014

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Posted in Medical Tourism/Health Tourism, Reports,Features, Statistics