This is the Health Tourism News roundup for the week of June 29 to July 7 2026. Malaysia and South Korea both reported record medical tourism figures this week, and both governments spent the week worrying about how concentrated those figures are. Penang alone generated 45 per cent of Malaysia’s medical tourism revenue, while Seoul received 87.2 per cent of South Korea’s 2.01 million foreign patients. Private equity firms moved on Malaysian hospital assets, and new hospitals in Abuja, Hanoi and Tashkent reported early progress in keeping patients at home. A cancer centre in Shanghai began treating its first international patient with a therapy available nowhere else.

Penang supplies 45 per cent of Malaysia’s medical tourism revenue

Penang’s tourism chairman Wong Hon Wai said in a statement on Tuesday that Malaysia had been ranked the world’s sixth best medical tourism destination by Travel and Tour World, behind Turkey, Thailand, India, Mexico and South Korea, The Star reported. National medical tourism revenue rose 23.2 per cent to RM3.35 billion in 2025, and the number of foreign patients grew from 1.6 million to 1.85 million. Penang remained the country’s largest centre. Its 16 participating private hospitals treated 527,176 foreign patients last year, up 25.94 per cent, and earned RM1.14 billion in medical tourism revenue, according to the Penang Centre of Medical Tourism. The state is already looking for new markets. PenangToday reported that a Qatari delegation led by Ambassador Salah bin Mohammed Al-Sorour toured Island Hospital, Northern Heart Hospital Penang and Sunway Medical Centre Penang after Qatar Airways resumed its Doha to Penang service under its winter schedule. Wong said the Middle East would reduce Penang’s dependence on Indonesian patients. The Business Times reported that Bain Capital, KKR and KV Asia Capital have been shortlisted for a minority stake in Avisena Healthcare, valuing the Malaysian hospital group at about US$368 million, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Binding bids are due by the end of July.

CodeBlue, a Malaysian health policy site, published an anonymous piece asking what share of the cost of hotel-style lobbies, concierge services and premium suites is carried by Malaysian patients. Those costs, the author argued, are folded into room rates and bundled charges rather than shown on the bill. The site withheld the author’s name because civil servants are barred from writing to the press. The questions are reasonable ones, and whether the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council engages with them will show how seriously the industry takes the point.

South Korea records 2.01 million foreign patients

South Korea counted 2.01 million foreign patients last year, the highest figure since records began in 2009, and the industry spent the week discussing what to do with them. The Korea Times reported that the K-Medical Tourism Roundtable met on Thursday to examine the shape of the sector. The Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade says the industry generated 22.8 trillion won, about US$14.6 billion, in wider economic effects last year. Kim Jin-kuk, who heads the country’s medical tourism promotion body, told the paper in a separate interview that Seoul alone received 87.2 per cent of foreign patients and that language remains their biggest obstacle. “There is a strong desire among foreigners to go to Korea and become beautiful,” Kim said. He proposed certified medical interpreters and a tiered qualification that would let foreign beauty professionals refer patients from their home countries. Hong Seung-wook of the Korea Health Industry Development Institute told the roundtable that dermatology and plastic surgery account for 68 per cent of foreign patients, and the greater Seoul area for 90 per cent of visits, a structure he called fragile. The Korea Times reported that foreign card spending passed 2 trillion won in May for the first time, with pharmacy spending up 206.1 per cent and dermatology clinics up 85.5 per cent on a year earlier.

A sector in which two procedures account for two thirds of patients and one urban area for nine tenths of visits can be upset by a single policy change or a diplomatic row. Of the reforms discussed at the roundtable, the interpreter shortage is the cheapest to fix, and whether Kim’s scheme is running before next year’s figures appear will be a fair test of intent.

Abuja, Hanoi and Tashkent report progress on keeping patients at home

Businessday reported that George Elombi, the president of Afreximbank, visited the African Medical Centre of Excellence in Abuja on Friday, a year after the hospital opened with backing from the bank and King’s College Hospital, London. The centre has treated more than 5,000 patients from over 20 countries, delivered West Africa’s first stereotactic body radiotherapy for lung cancer, completed its first triple bypass and processed 40,000 laboratory tests. “The success of this Centre reflects the depth of talent assembled here,” Elombi said. Laodong reported that Hanoi intends to retain the US$2 billion to US$3 billion that Vietnamese patients spend abroad each year. Its health department plans cancer, heart and dental care packages and a coordinating office. In Tashkent, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev toured the US$30 million Global International Hospital and told officials to “combine medical and tourism services in a balanced way” and to build more hotels near hospitals, Trend reported.

The projects are small against the sums their governments hope to keep, but radiotherapy delivered in Abuja removes one of the procedures that once required a flight to London. The limit of every such plan appeared in the same week. Jiahui Health announced that a 59-year-old New Zealander with advanced gastroduodenal cancer had become the first international patient to begin Satri-cel, the first approved CAR-T therapy for a solid tumour, which is available only in China. He is the second New Zealander in a month to travel to Shanghai for CAR-T treatment. Programmes like these can compete on price and quality. They have no answer yet to a therapy that exists in one country.

Cosmetic tourism grows faster than its safeguards

The Bali Sun reported research from the medical device firm idsMED showing Indonesia’s aesthetic market growing at about 15 per cent a year, led by skin tightening. One clinic in Surabaya performed about 500 treatments in the three months after installing a Korean radio-frequency device, the paper said. Türkiye’s health tourism sector received about 1.4 million foreign visitors in 2025 and earned US$3.3 billion, the country’s tourism ministry told a D-8 webinar, according to APP. Türkiye Today published a detailed warning for prospective patients: a before-and-after photograph is not a medical evaluation, a package price says nothing about who performs the procedure or what a free revision covers. Patients who pay foreign intermediaries with no Turkish authorisation, it warned, may find no clear legal party to sue if the work fails. It advised patients to verify the clinic, the doctor and the intermediary through the Turkish Ministry of Health before paying anyone.

The advice applies well beyond Türkiye. Unlicensed intermediaries who collect payment abroad are a known weakness of the trade. Destinations arriving late to the boom, Bali among them, could make verified providers their selling point rather than repeat the familiar cycle of growth, scandal and regulation.

Wellness travel demand keeps growing

A Priority Pass survey of 12,000 travellers in 20 countries, carried by CBN, found that 47 per cent now travel for wellness at least once a year and that a third combine wellness with sporting events. Just over half said the journey itself shapes their view of a holiday. The wellness travel market is projected to pass £718 billion by 2030. Nomad Lawyer published an enthusiastic account of a thermal bath revival across Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, claiming savings of 40 to 60 per cent against Switzerland, though the piece named few sources and its figures could not be verified. When nearly half of travellers report at least one wellness trip a year, wellness has stopped being a niche.

What This Means

The week’s pattern is plain enough. Success in medical tourism concentrates, and the governments and investors who hold it are working to spread it before it turns into a liability. Penang is recruiting new source markets, Korea wants patients beyond Seoul and beyond dermatology and plastic surgery, and private equity is buying into the operators that concentration has already rewarded. Three things over the coming months will show how far this goes: the binding bids for Avisena due by the end of July, whether Korea’s interpreter and visa reforms move from roundtable to regulation, and the second-year figures from the African Medical Centre of Excellence in Abuja.