A Kenyan medical laboratory student. [Photo/nation.co.ke]
Kenya needs to train more medical personnel as well as put up additional health facilities to tap the huge opportunities in the medical tourism.
Experts meeting in Nairobi to deliberate on synergies to reduce multi-billion shillings health tourism outflows, say the country needs to work on reducing medical cost by at least 40 percent as well as curb the influx of anti-counterfeit drugs.
About 10,000 Kenyans travel abroad annually for health related reasons and spend about 10 billion on the medical attention.
India has emerged as a key target of the medical related travels due to the perceived low cost and specialized service.
Travelling outside one’s country for medical care has emerged into a global multi-billion dollar industry that is projected to hit 32.5 billion dollars by 2019.
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, Egypt and South Africa are some of the biggest spenders on medical tourism that is estimated to cost the continent 1 billion dollars annually.
The outcome of the discussion is expected to guide the third medium term national health tourism strategy being drafted by the Vision 2030 delivery secretariat.
Experts say an appropriate institutional and regulatory framework would help to ensure that support related services by the public and business sectors provide clear leverage for exploitation of medical and health tourism potential.
They argue that Kenya should train more medical personnel, put up additional health facilities, reduce cost of health services by least 40 percent as well as curb the influx of anti-counterfeit drugs to benefit from the multi-billion dollar industry.
The conference also seeks to market Kenya as a preferred health and medical travel destination. Currently, about 3,000-5,000 foreigners visit Kenya annually for health-related reasons.