Mexico Stakes Higher Bet on Medical Tourism

By Kent Paterson, Frontera NorteSur
January 23, 2010

Carefully observing the changing demographics of US society, Mexico's federal government is wagering that the graying of Gringolandia will give a strong impulse to medical tourism. "A million baby boomers, as they are called in the US, could come to live in Mexico in the coming years," said Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos at an event held earlier this month in Mexico to mark National Nursing Day. An opportunity exists, Cordova said, for tourism promoters to sell not only sun and sand but also "treatments or surgeries."

In coordination with other federal agencies, the Health Ministry plans to build up the medical tourism infrastructure during the next two years. Important components of the initiative include training a corps of bilingual Spanish-English nurses, and increasing the number of private Mexican hospitals accredited by a joint US-Mexico commission already at work. According to Cordova, eight such private institutions have been certified under the commission's standards.

Although regional initiatives to promote medical tourism are underway in the northern border states of Chihuahua, Baja California and Nuevo Leon, Cordova said greater coordination at the federal level is needed to tap a global market enjoyed by nations including Thailand, India, Costa Rica and Brazil. Mexico's leading health official stressed the new program will benefit the private sector.

"This is going to be an incentive for the private market," Cordova said. Cordova acknowledged that training bilingual nurses risks a bigger brain drain to the US, where some localities are already recruiting Mexican nurses for much higher pay than they receive at home, but was careful to add the envisioned training will focus on elite sectors of Mexican health care delivery like cosmetic surgery and other specialized treatments. Pilot programs to train bilingual nurses are in the stage of preparation, Cordova added.

Whether medical tourism booms in Mexico will depend on a variety of social, economic, political and security trends north and south of the border. Continued violence in parts of the border region is likely to hamper potential growth in the short-term. A big factor will be the outcome of so-called health care reform in the US, especially if legislation is passed that increases rather than lower costs as the Obama administration proposes.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

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