Medical Tourism and Inequity in India

Kristen Smith has written a penetrating analysis revealing that medical tourism constitutes one more example of the unequal economic relationships between the Global North and the Global South. She argues that the while the medical tourist industry bills itself as a strategy for overcoming deficiencies in failing public health systems in countries like India, the juxtaposition of luxurious settings of international patient suites in corporate and even public hospitals and overcrowded and dilapidated wards of public hospitals belie this assertion. Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years also poignantly illustrates the health divide between the affluent and the poor of the world system.

-- Hans A. Baer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne and co-author of Introducing Medical Anthropology (2019)

This book presents a thought provoking and well researched case study from India, a country at once experiencing rapid and unfettered expansion of a poorly regulated private health care market promoted by neoliberal policies, and home to a local population heavily reliant on private medical care for which it largely pays out of pocket despite the existence of insurance schemes. Smith astutely problematizes the growth of medical tourism in India today and raises key questions about the economics and ethics of promoting medical tourism in countries where adequate, affordable, and safe primary healthcare is not yet available.

-- Mark Nichter, University of Ari