Tag: Medical Travel

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Travel Confessions: 'I Was a Dental Tourist in Thailand'

Where: Siam Soi 2, Bangkok, Thailand
October 11, 2011 at 2:54 PM | by | Comments (3)

And now, a first-person confession account of medical tourism:

I was in Thailand with a broken tooth. Granted, it had been broken for a while after chomping on some blackcurrant gummies in London, of all things. And then, while in Bangkok, I broke another one chewing blueberry gum. What was happening to my mouth? But more importantly, could I get this all fixed here for a fraction of what it'd cost me back in the States? Thailand is growing famous as a destination for dental tourism and without a dental plan, my US dentist was quoting well into four digits for a crown, so I decided to give it a go.

While researching and stopping into clinics around the city, the first warning I got was not to necessarily trust the Thai dentist clinics that rank highest in Google Search. Duh. The second was not to ask a local for a recommendation as that's about as trustworthy as the Google Search thing. Oh well, I went against the latter warning and sought advice from a local I trusted and she named The Dentist Clinic by the upscale Siam Paragon mall. Bingo.

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Ryanair Handles Mid-Flight Passenger Heart Attack Exactly How You Imagine

August 5, 2011 at 2:32 PM | by | Comments (0)

Any time Ryanair spokespeople begin to talk about following EU airline regulations—and by "following EU airline regulations" they mean "doing the absolute minimum as required by law"—you know that something has gone wildly awry.

Last time we saw them being defensive like this was last year, after they stranded Canary Island-bound passengers on the entirely wrong island in the midst of a thunderstorm. The airline's excuse? That according to EU regulations they were, in terms of physical distance, close enough.

So with Ryanair spokesperson Stephen McNamara telling a Swedish newspaper that flight attendants handled a medical situation according to EU requirements, you know that the story is going to be good. And by good we mean very, awesomely bad.

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Scalpels and Seasickness: A Cruise Ship's Doctor Deals With It All

July 18, 2011 at 1:30 PM | by | Comment (1)

When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one. And over the next two weeks, we'd like to introduce you to them.

Last week we gave you exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," and the ships' acupuncturist. Now it's time to get technical with Dr. Shaun, a Medical Officer onboard the Queen Victoria.

Not feeling so well on your cruise? No problem—since down below the theatre, below the bars and below even the cheapest cabins sits the Queen Victoria's full Medical Center, with its team of doctors and nurses in officer's whites ready to treat everything from your minor case of mal de mer up to serious, surgical matters.

One of the smart team is Dr. Shaun, a South African who has taken his medical training and interest in sports medicine to the high seas. He treats both passengers and crew, a easy feat considering how well-equipped the Medical Center is with two clinics, private recovery rooms (with portholes!) and heavy gear like portable X-ray machines and yes—Defibrillators.

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Being an Acupuncturist on a Cruise Ship is So Much More Than Sticking Pins in People

July 15, 2011 at 2:43 PM | by | Comment (1)

When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one. And over the next two weeks, we'd like to introduce you to them.

Now that you're fully acquainted with a ship's officer and a pro dancer, it's time to indulge a bit with Justin Lane, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and the Queen Victoria's resident Acupuncturist.

Originally from San Francisco, Justin’s been fully qualified to stick needles in people for just two years, but he’s been into acupuncture for far longer than that. Growing up, he suffered from asthma and allergies; where Western medicine failed to help, acupuncture did the job. “Chinese medicine made a profound difference to my life,” he says. So when his childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot fell through, he decided to help others the way he’d been helped. After his undergrad degree (Psychology in San Fran, no less) he headed down to the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine at San Diego for four years of training.

As Cunard is a British ship, the majority of passengers are English, which doesn’t always bode well for Justin, since he reckons that not only are Americans more open to trying new therapies and into spa-ing in general, but also that, because of the (glorious) NHS, the Brits aren’t used to paying for healthcare.

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Help Paul Walker Reach Out to Disaster Victims Worldwide and Travel for Free

May 4, 2011 at 3:27 PM | by | Comments (0)

This week, Fast Five's Paul Walker is headed to Alabama to help victims of the recent tornadoes, and you can help too.

Walker has traveled around the world helping those in need after natural disasters on behalf of the non-profit Reach Out Worldwide. Reach Out Worldwide, which is a network trained volunteers who act as first responders in the United States and abroad, is always looking for volunteers to help out on their next trip.

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Japan is Building a Medical Tourism Mecca in Osaka

Where: Osaka, Japan
January 26, 2011 at 9:36 AM | by | Comment (1)

Japan's obviously been trying to brainstorm ways to drum up more tourists. Plan A, the "Welcome to Japan bra" that greets tourists in three languages, must not be working, because it's resorting to plan B: making Osaka a medical tourism center.

The country adopted a new growth strategy in June that includes promoting medical tourism. The Raffles Medical Group of Singapore, which will set up shop in Osaka, just might be the botox shot the city needed to become a top medical tourism destination.

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Yelp's iPhone App Can Help You Score Some Good Weed

October 14, 2010 at 9:30 AM | by | Comments (0)

It might not be Amsterdam, but San Francisco is peppered with Cannabis Clinics...for medical purposes, of course. These are legitimate business in California and so why shouldn't they get listed like any other business is—on Yelp? As a matter of fact they are, a discovery we recently made while digging deeper into our Yelp iPhone app, where a category specifically for "Cannabis Clinics/Evaluations resides.

Searching around us in New York it finds nothing, but going to the other side of the country changes all of that. What's more is that Yelp reviewers actually take reviewing their favorite Cannabis clinics seriously. We've even learned a new word from this category: "budtender."

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Spain Emerges as a Hot Spot for Babymaking Tourism

Where: Spain
August 27, 2010 at 11:53 AM | by | Comments (0)

India has been known as a place to go for overseas fertility treatments, but it looks like Spain is emerging as the center for fertility tourism for its excellent clinics and its policies that favor egg donors.

A high percentage of British couples, in particular, are heading to the country for help getting pregnant. The UK's up-to-two-year wait for donated eggs is frustrating many British couples, so they are opting to try their luck in Spain. Donors aren't as plentiful in the U.K. because they cannot receive payment, only about $86 a day, with a max of $388, for loss of earnings and some out-of-pocket costs, like food and travel. In Spain, donors all receive $1,142 for their services.

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Latvia Wants to Be a Hotspot for LASIK and More Medical Tourism

Where: Latvia
March 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM | by | Comments (4)

Riga, Latvia, wants to inject itself into the global medical tourism industry. It's promising visitors tighter skin, nicer teeth and other fountain-of-youth services in the capital of the Baltic country.

But Latvia will have to compete with more established medical tourism destinations, such as South Korea and South Africa. What the country has in its favor is price: cosmetic surgery can be 40 percent cheaper there than in Western Europe, the Times Online reported.

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Three Top Destinations For a Medical Vacation

February 18, 2010 at 9:30 AM | by | Comment (1)

With health-care reform stalling out and the recession in full swing, there are more reasons than ever for people to seek cheaper medical treatment overseas. According to a recent report from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, although the U.S. economy has slowed down, the demand for cosmetic procedures is up. In 2007 an estimated 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for health care, and the number is supposed to reach 6 million this year, Deloitte reported. We take look at popular medical tourism spots.

See which countries people are traveling to for a quickie nip and tuck after the jump.

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South Korea Promotes Itself As The Spot For Eyelid Surgery

Where: Korea
February 16, 2010 at 10:35 AM | by | Comments (0)

With health-care reform stalling out and the recession in full swing, there are more reasons than ever for people to seek cheaper medical treatment overseas. According to a recent report from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, although the U.S. economy has slowed down, the demand for cosmetic procedures is up. In 2007 an estimated 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for health care, and the number is supposed to reach 6 million this year, Deloitte reported. This week, we'll look at popular medical tourism spots.

South Korea is one place that's really pushing its medical tourism services. It has its own government-backed Council for Korea Medicine Overseas Promotion and will turn the island of Jeju into a resort-style medical tourism center dubbed "Healthcare Town" in 2011.

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Medical Tourism Booms In Ghana, Of All Places

Where: Ghana
November 3, 2009 at 8:59 AM | by | Comments (2)

The west African country of Ghana hasn't been too high up on our list of wanna-visits, although its position improved a lot when we heard Ghana is the second highest producer of cocoa - maybe that chocolate bar we just downed came out of Ghana. Anyway, Ghana is actually going for a different target now: the health tourist.

It turns out that quite a lot of Ghanaians get medical degrees overseas, and one way of enticing them back to Ghana has been to open a bunch of top-class medical clinics. Sadly, of course, the average Ghanaian citizen can't afford to visit such a clinic—but a tourist can, and for a normal tourist, the prices are bargain basement while the care is excellent.

Cosmetic surgery is high on the list of tourist-wants, although simpler treatments like massages and detox are popular too. So far, the foreign visitors seem to be mostly the wealthy from other African countries, but when celebrities start getting boob-jobs in Ghana, you can say that you read it here first.

Related Stories:
· Ghana Targets Health Tourism Boom [BBC]
· Ghana Travel Guide [Jaunted]

[Photo: bagaball]

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