Pakistan seek to promote hair and organ transplants

Pakistan seeks to promote hair transplant and organ transplant medical tourism.

Pakistan seeks to promote hair transplant and organ transplant medical tourism.

The Asian Hair Research Society wants the government to set up a medical tourism council similar to the one in Turkey to promote local health experts and hospitals to attract patients. Hair transplant surgeons claim that Pakistan’s medical practitioners can carry out hair transplant procedures more effectively and at cheaper rates than in Turkey.

A large number of Pakistanis go to India for liver, kidney and heart transplants, while others go to Turkey for hair transplants. The argument is that with properly promoted medical tourism, Pakistanis would stay at home and foreign patients would go to Pakistan.

Many expatriate Pakistanis annually visit the country for dental procedures, eye surgery, general surgery, and other medical procedures, but the country gets few patients from other countries.

Pakistan’s entry into medical tourism was mostly based on cheap organ transplant tourism. Although the government outlawed the practice in 2008, there are disturbing reports that the trade is far from dead. The Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance in 2007 to check the commercialisation of organ transplantation in Pakistan is being flouted with impunity. Some hospitals that were leaders in organ transplant tourism continue to offer their services.