This is the Health Tourism News roundup for 6 to 12 August 2026.
Vietnam medical tourism targets
Vietnam’s Ministry of Health is targeting 750,000 international medical tourists and USD 1 billion in direct healthcare revenue by 2030, under a draft plan for 2026 to 2030 that went out for consultation this week. It puts current volume at about 300,000 international visitors using medical services each year, spending an estimated USD 1 to 2 billion including accommodation, travel and food.
The plan also records the other direction. Vietnamese citizens spend an estimated USD 2 to 3 billion a year on treatment abroad, which the ministry states is more than the country earns from inbound medical visitors.
Ho Chi Minh City accounts for about 40 per cent of international medical tourists, Hanoi second. The ministry lists what is missing: no dedicated legal framework, no standardised service packages, no national brand, and rules that stop public hospitals fully costing services for foreign patients. It wants at least 20 hospitals meeting international quality standards by 2030, five of them public, piloted in five to seven locations from 2026 to 2028 and extended nationwide from 2029.
Nigeria outbound spending
A Nigerian-domiciled company launched in Lagos on 7 August with plans to manufacture regenerative biologics locally, aimed at the USD 2.39 billion Nigerians spend each year on treatment abroad, Business Day reported. It pairs a United States manufacturing firm with a Nigerian hospital group. A Dangote Industries executive, delivering Aliko Dangote’s keynote at a Lagos regenerative medicine summit, said the pandemic had shown what dependence on imported medical products costs. “Dependence is a vulnerability,” she said.
Enugu State’s international hospital, due to open within weeks, has been set a target of cutting Nigerians’ overseas treatment by up to 40 per cent within a year of opening, its chief executive told journalists touring the site on 12 August. It is to run cancer, cardiac, neurosciences, renal and nuclear medicine centres, with a cyclotron on site.
A 250-bed hospital in Ogun State and a specialist centre in Abuja agreed a referral and training partnership on 2 August; the Abuja centre said it had treated patients from 23 countries in its first year.
India inbound patient volumes
Medical value travel to India from conflict-affected regions has fallen 40 to 60 per cent, with airfares up 15 to 25 per cent, the chair of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s medical value travel committee told Arab News. Airspace restrictions following the US-Israeli war on Iran have run for five months. India ranks 10th of 46 destinations on the 2025 Medical Tourism Index.
One large Indian hospital group treated 32,000 foreign patients last year, 5,000 of them from the Middle East, and its sales director said similar numbers were unlikely in 2026. Elective and wellness clinics have seen the steepest falls; cardiac, renal and oncology volumes held up better, those cases being harder to defer.
Bangladesh’s High Commissioner to Pakistan told a meeting in Islamabad on 8 August that nearly 800,000 Bangladeshis travel abroad for treatment each year and spend more than USD 6 billion, and asked for visa facilitation and better air links. Those patients have historically gone to India, and The News tied the shift to strained Dhaka-New Delhi relations since the change of government in August 2024. Pakistan’s National Health Tourism Working Group chair said a quarter of that market would be 200,000 patients and USD 1.5 billion.
Medical tourism market estimates
Two governments were given materially different estimates of the same market in the same week. Vietnam’s health ministry told its own consultation that global medical tourism revenue in 2024 ran between about USD 40 billion and more than USD 100 billion, growing 8 to 16 per cent a year through 2035. Pakistan’s Special Investment Facilitation Council was told by industry experts that the 2024 figure was USD 144.5 billion, reaching USD 704.8 billion by 2033 at an annual rate above 19 per cent.
India’s market was quoted twice in four days. A parliamentary standing committee report tabled in the Rajya Sabha on 7 August cited industry estimates of USD 8.7 billion in 2025, rising to USD 16.2 billion by 2030. On 10 August the FICCI committee chair put the sector at USD 13 billion.
Neither government document names the research house behind its figure. The committee, which recommended that hospitals earning from international and wealthy patients cross-subsidise tertiary care for poor Indians, attributed its own figure to unspecified industry estimates.
Egypt and Sarawak hospital investment
A consortium led by Egypt’s Inventure Group with Italy’s Impresa Pizzarotti and China’s CSCEC plans to invest nearly USD 5.3 billion in two Egyptian medical cities, discussed with the prime minister in Cairo on 5 August. One, at USD 2.8 billion, goes in the new administrative capital near Cairo and the other, at USD 2.5 billion, at El-Alamein, both with hotels and recuperation centres. The government expects nearly 3 million medical tourists within three years of the sites opening, AGBI reported.
Sarawak attracted more than 100,000 medical tourists in 2025, which the state Premier told reporters on 10 August was double the previous year. He put Sarawak’s own population at 2.5 million against 35 million in Borneo and 700 million across ASEAN, naming Indonesia and its 280 million people as the market. A Singapore-based operator broke ground the same day on a 300-bed private hospital in Kuching due for completion in 2029.
Spa carbon measurement
A typical spa visit produced about 5 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent at a large Bucharest wellness resort and about 3.5 kg at a smaller university-run sports-park spa, on measurements published on 22 July in the peer-reviewed journal Communications Sustainability. The calculator, SPA-DEC, was developed by Therme Group and the University of Surrey with co-funding from Innovate UK, and its authors call it the first standardised method for measuring a single spa visit’s footprint in real time.
On-site renewable generation cut per-visit emissions by about 33 per cent at the larger site and about 14 per cent at the smaller one during 2024. The method divides total emissions across every visit and covers all three scopes of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
By the Numbers
Rs 50,508 (about USD 529) average cost of a hospitalisation in an Indian private hospital against Rs 6,631 (about USD 69) in a government hospital, January to December 2025, on the 80th round of the National Sample Survey.
43.4 per cent of India’s total health expenditure paid out of pocket in 2022-23, on figures cited by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare.
USD 1 billion in direct healthcare revenue from international patients, Vietnam’s target for 2030, on the Ministry of Health draft plan issued for consultation in August 2026.
About 5 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per spa visit at a large Bucharest wellness resort during 2024, on measurements published by Therme Group and the University of Surrey.
USD 5.3 billion committed to two Egyptian medical cities at a meeting with Egypt’s prime minister on 5 August 2026, reported by AGBI.
More than 100,000 medical tourists in Sarawak during 2025, on figures given by the state Premier.
What to Watch
Vietnam’s draft medical tourism plan was open for consultation as of 12 August, its first phase running from 2026 to 2028 across five to seven pilot locations.
The Global Conference on Medical Tourism runs in Yerevan from 21 to 23 September 2026, organised by Armenia’s Tourism Committee with the United Nations World Tourism Organization.
Pakistan and Bangladesh agreed on 8 August to expedite a health cooperation memorandum, unsigned on that date.
The 300-bed private hospital that broke ground in Kuching on 10 August is due for completion in 2029.
Currencies converted at mid-market rates on 14 August 2026.
