Saudi Arabia on the cusp of medical tourism?
Photo: A car drives past Sulaiman Al-Habib private hospital in Riyadh January 20, 2014 / REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
Religion is the engine that drives Saudi Arabia’s tourism industry, but when it comes to medical tourism, where the kingdom could provide high-quality healthcare to Muslim patients, the kingdom falls flat.
Despite being considered one of the world’s top countries in healthcare, with Western-trained surgeons and technologically advanced hospitals, Saudi Arabia lags behind the United States, Costa Rica, India and Thailand in terms of medical tourism.
A relatively new niche, medical tourism caters to patients who travel abroad for anything from cosmetic surgery to organ transplants, usually to save money.
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Rob L. Wagner