Surgery Safaris – The Facelift Africa Needs

Medical tourism is highly competitive and bringing millions to Africa. Rich and poor alike are taking holidays with hospitals to get procedures from a $70 botox injection to a $3,600 breast augmentation. African entrepreneur Faith Cartwright is right in the thick of it.

- Jay Caboz

If you have got hard currency, you can afford to come to Africa to look good or feel better for less. Fourteen million people, spending between $3,800 and $6,000 per visit, are traveling the world looking for medical treatment with a beach holiday.

It’s a market estimated to be worth between $45 billion and $72 billion, and South Africa is sitting at the top table, according to Patients Beyond Borders (PBB), a US-based firm that has given medical tourism advice for a decade. The country has the advantage of good hospitals, English speaking doctors and breathtaking landscapes.

They call it medical tourism and it’s growing among the wealthy and not-so-wealthy. Even those who don’t have so much money are heading to hospitals in countries like South Africa where their hard currency makes it cheaper and also helps them escape hospital waiting lists in their own land.

Even in these hard times, PBB expects this multi-billion dollar industry to increase by up to 25% per year over the next 10 years.

One entrepreneur who is banking on this is Cape Town-based Faith Cartwright, who founded Medical Tourism SA three-and-a-half years ago. Cartwright, a hospitality and guesthouse owner, noticed many of her guests were in South Africa for medical procedures.

“Who wouldn’t pay if they knew that they had to go through two years of pain waiting for a knee operation? Imagine you have decided you want children and you are told you can’t go through fertility treatment because you are 39 and cannot get an appointment,” says Cartwright.

“I thought ‘what if medical tourists like these could be given access to private medical care, have their accommodation and travel needs taken care of, and plan safaris and other tourist excursions, all through the same service provider?’”