The Lowdown: How Ghana is positioning itself to tap into the $60b global medical tourism sector

The President of the African Medical Tourism Council, Dr. Kwabena Appiah-Sakyi, has praised Ghana for taking a huge leap in promoting the country as a medical tourist destination.

He explained that the fact that now, complex medical procedures, including kidney transplants, can be performed in Ghana, makes it a preferred destination for promoting medical.

Speaking with Etsey Atisu on The Lowdown on GhanaWeb TV, Dr. Appiah-Sakyi indicated that Ghana has always been at the forefront of such initiatives, particularly in the subregion.

“Ghana has always been at the forefront of medical care or medical specialties within the subregion, and by that very fact, has attracted people into the country. So, beyond the cardiothoracic unit being formed, after that… and I feel like that is where we kind of dropped the ball a little bit because we are allowing some of our neighbours to gradually catch up with us.

“And today, we have Ghanaians that are going to India for healthcare. If we had continued with that pace, today, we would have had some of our procedures being done in Ghana, but the good part of the story is that now, we are starting to do kidney transplants; we’re starting to do some very complicated procedures in Ghana,” he said.

Dr. Kwabena Appiah-Sakyi was on The Lowdown to discuss the subject of medical tourism in Africa.

Among the things discussed, was the fact that medical tourism has been happening in Ghana even before independence and has been growing organically.

He also spoke about how Ghana can be positioned to tap into the $60 billion global sector.

"If you look globally, annually, there is about 60 billion that goes into medical tourism," he said.

Watch the full video below:



Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.



AE/OGB.