Kazakhstan treated about 80,000 foreign patients last year and has set a target of 300,000 a year, Euronews reported. Kazakhstan is presenting itself as the medical tourism hub of Central Asia, and its main draw is the National Research Oncology Centre in Astana, which runs the only proton therapy unit in the region. Arrivals have climbed since 2020, with patient numbers from India up 40-fold and from China up 24-fold over that period, Euronews reported. Numbers from Türkiye have tripled over that period.
Patients now travel to Kazakhstan from about 50 countries, the Ministry of Healthcare says. The Kazakhstan Medical Tourism Association expects the total to reach 300,000 foreign patients a year, the figure the government has fixed on. Health Minister Akmaral Alnazarova put much of the appeal down to price, with diagnostic and surgical work costing five to ten times less than similar treatment in the United States or Europe. Clinical protocols are “aligned with European standards”, Alnazarova said, and have gone through health technology assessment for more than ten years.
Accreditation and specialist centres
Nine clinics in Kazakhstan are accredited by Joint Commission International, the safety standard most often cited in medical tourism. Three specialist centres carry much of the country’s case for complex care. Its National Centre for Neurosurgery runs a Gamma Knife system for brain and spinal work, the only one in the region, Euronews reported. The Cardiac Surgery Centre performs heart transplants and other heart surgery. Its National Centre for Maternal and Child Health treats young patients, with a focus on childhood blood cancers.
European visitors most often come for IVF, drawn by lower prices, Euronews reported. Foreign patients are also arriving for high-tech dental work, which the report described as a growing part of the country’s medical tourism offer.
Proton therapy and cancer care
Kazakhstan has widened its cancer care, adding six radiotherapy centres and 19 endoscopy units and upgrading 17 cancer centres in recent years. The largest step came last year with proton therapy, a precise form of radiation that targets tumours while sparing nearby tissue. Kazakhstan became the first country in Central Asia and the 25th worldwide to run the technology, Euronews reported. That unit can treat up to 1,000 patients a year and uses the ProBeam 360 system.
Gulnara Shakenova, a brain cancer patient among the first treated at the unit, said the procedure was “completely painless”. The centre now wants to become a regional training and research base for International Atomic Energy Agency programmes in nuclear medicine. An IAEA mission visited in January to assess the centre’s facilities and staff, said Indira Tleulessova, head of its Centre for Radiation Technologies, who said Kazakhstan hoped to become “an anchor centre” for the region. That ambition sits alongside a wider regional push, with Central Asian states weighing a shared tourism ring that names medical travel among its aims, and Gulf development money funding hospitals in Kazakhstan and its neighbours.
Building a MedTech base
Kazakhstan wants to become a medical innovation hub within five years, Euronews reported, citing Adlet Tabarov of the Salidat Kairbekova National Scientific Centre for Healthcare Development. The country is building a full innovation cycle that runs from research through preclinical testing to local production, and a new vivarium at the Nazarbayev University research cluster now allows preclinical studies to be done inside the country. The current emphasis is on clinical pilots rather than large-scale rollout, said MedTech specialist Seitzhan Sypabek, who said the approach “reduces costs and risks for investors”.
One example is Cerebra AI, a stroke-detection system in pilot use across 17 stroke centres in Kazakhstan and several hospitals in Uzbekistan. Its developers say it can detect strokes within minutes. The project has drawn foreign investment, including from the Singapore firm Quest Ventures. Kazakh startups raised €65 million in 2024, which BGlobal Ventures put at 74 per cent of all venture capital deals in Central Asia, Euronews reported.
What the numbers rest on
There is a plain way to read a target like 300,000. Medical tourism grows on a small set of standing drivers: a price gap against richer markets, a few accredited centres that anchor trust, and treatments patients cannot easily get at home. Kazakhstan has all three, with prices five to ten times below the United States or Europe, nine JCI-accredited clinics, and a proton unit that is the only one in Central Asia. The weaker point is the gap between what it announces and what it has built. A single proton unit treating up to 1,000 patients a year does not by itself carry a jump from 80,000 to 300,000 foreign patients, and much of the growth so far has come from two markets, India and China, whose numbers rose off a low base after 2020.
That concentration is the figure to watch. A destination that builds its medical tourism on two fast-growing source markets inherits their politics and their economics, and the 40-fold and 24-fold rises that look striking now are the ones most exposed to reversal. The test for Kazakhstan is whether arrivals spread beyond India and China toward the 50 countries the Ministry of Healthcare already counts, and whether more proton capacity and wider centres arrive before the 300,000 target does. The next annual patient figures, set against that count from about 50 countries, will show which way it is running.
