EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Medicine, Tourism

Medical tourism has become a widespread international phenomenon, where citizens of wealthy countries seek ways to combine travel with attractively-priced healthcare.

Latvia does not claim to be a leader in diagnostics or medical care, but it has quietly become a popular location for medical tourism, writes the journal. Specialized centers and modern SPA resorts offer a wide range of treatments and procedures for treating a variety of health conditions, strengthening the immune system and improving well-being. And all this is set against the background of pine forests, sandy beaches and the beautiful Baltic Sea.

The journal gives as examples the Vaivari and Jaunkemeri rehabilitation centers.

A detailed article on medical tourism was also published on the February edition of the magazine Kapitals.

The magazine reminds readers that visitors from abroad have been making use of Latvian private medical services since the first pioneers – private dentists – started operating in the early 1990s. The private medical sector has greatly developed since then, investing large sums of money in new technologies, and now offers everything necessary to open foreigners' wallets and direct money into the exhausted Latvian health care system.

As Kapitals points out, in some Latvian private clinics at present at least 20% of patients are foreigners. "At least one of our patients every day is a foreigner. The number increases with every year. If a few years ago the number of foreign patients was about 10-15% of the total number, then last year it had grown to 25%," said Ivete Gile, the Director of the plastic surgery clinic Plastikas kirurgijas klinika.

The sector continues to develop, with the recently founded Medical Tourism Center (Medicinas tourismu centrs) working to establish representation abroad to increase the number of patients arriving from the UK, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, as well as from further afield. Representatives of the center calculate that one foreign patient can bring in an average of around LVL 50,000.