Turkey’s medical tourism sector can be hair-raising
02-Oct-16, The National
According to the Turkish Healthcare Travel Council, 746,000 foreign visitors landed in Turkey for medical treatment in 2015. As many as 100,000 arrived for hair implant surgeries and nearly two-thirds of them were from the UAE.
%20Murad%20Sezer_Reuters.jpg "Turkeys medical tourism sector can be hair raising (c) Murad Sezer Reuters")
Image: Murad / Reuters
Turkey earned USD5.8 bn from legal medical tourism in 2015. Medical treatment in Turkey costs as little as half the price in countries such as Germany and the United States, the THTC says.
It is perhaps little wonder that illegal clinics are growing. Every day scores of clients’ documents and lists of customers are delivered by middlemen to and from dozens of tourism agencies in central Istanbul. Then the agencies introduce the patients to a clinic, which in return pays the tour agency a certain amount of commission per visitor.