Complicating common ideas about medical tourism: gender, class, and globality

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Medical tourism from the UK to Poland : how the market masks migration

Much medical travel happens, but it is misleading to label it as ‘medical tourism’. Rather, patterns of travel reflect a range of drivers: from longstanding cultural, economic and political ties to the country providing treatment, to word-of-mouth networks. Poland provides a particularly interesting case, as it has been touted as the leading medical tourism destination for UK medical travellers in Europe; marketing by Polish providers is advanced and there is strong government support for the industry. In this paper examining data from the UK's International Passenger Survey for the past 15 years, we demonstrate that, while travel to Poland has indeed increased dramatically, much of this actually reflects a wider pattern of Polish migrants living in the UK and returning to Poland for medical care rather than increased ‘medical tourism’ consumer activity by Britons in Poland

The Burden of Pursuing Treatment Abroad: Three Stories of Medical Travelers from Yemen

This case study features stories of patients from Yemen, a low-income country in the Arabian Peninsula, who traveled abroad for medical care. Their stories, drawn from interviews with Yemeni medical travelers in India, highlight the economic and emotional burden of pursuing treatment abroad. These stories of chronic non-communicable diseases and serious injuries depart from the common portrayal of medical tourists as wealthy elective patients from the North traveling for cosmetic surgery. The stories center on the demand and benefit of technological medicine for patients from low-income countries and raise questions about what constitutes ‘health’ when non-communicable conditions often entail ongoing efforts at treatment. The case study demonstrates that relying on treatment abroad may result in suboptimal outcomes for local health systems

The lure of technology: Yemenis' international medical travel in a global era

Using Yemen as a case study, this medical anthropological dissertation examines experiences of serious illnesses and injuries in developing countries that lack the financial and medical capabilities to treat them. Yemeni patients suffering from cancer and other complicated conditions must currently go abroad to pursue advanced medical care. Despite the great cost, medical travellers are from all social classes. The dissertation draws on multi-sited and multi-locale research to explore hardships that result when medical possibilities, and awareness of them, surpass financial abilities. I situate the international medical travel of Yemeni patients and family members in a global context. This highlights both worldwide commonalities surrounding sophisticated medical technology, and specifics related to Yemen as a developing country with its particular historical and cultural context. In this study, I employed an array of methods: interviews with Yemeni medical travellers in India and Jordan, participant observation in Yemen's central hospital, scourings of Yemen's Arabic newspapers from the first half of the 20th century, and open-ended surveys with doctors, religious scholars, and members of the Yemeni Parliament. Data sources are interwoven throughout the dissertation. Chapters parallel the various steps that patients and family members take throughout their medical journeys. In the conclusion, I argue that medicine should not be viewed as a consumer good for the market to regulate. In pursuing and providing high-tech medicine, patients and their families fulfill moral, social, and familial obligations

Therapeutic itineraries in a global world: Yemeni biomedical treatment abroad

This study examines various sites of international travel for medical care. Focusing primarily on Yemenis' medical travel to Jordan and other countries, the study explores a variety of issues and experiences of care-seeking abroad. Topics covered include state and institutional support for treatment outside the country, linkages between countries that facilitate movements, medical travellers' funding and logistical decisions, and therapeutic reputations leading to destination selection. The following examples of medical travel are also considered: the special receptions of Arab royalty, an advanced care facility in Scotland, and organ donors and recipients. This study is set within a context of increasing globalization, where advances in medical procedures and devices, communication, and transportation all contribute to people's ideas about where to go for medical care

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomena can be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions—a framework for human affective research. In this capstone paper for the special issue “Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Human Affectome”, we gather the tiered purpose of human affective phenomena to synthesize assumptions that account for human affective phenomena collectively. This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research