Ethiopia Hopes to Reinvent its Biggest City as an African Medical Tourism Hub

The Roha Medical Campus, which is backed by U.S. investors, is being built close to Bole Airport in Addis Ababa, which is already one of Africa’s busiest air transit hubs thanks to Ethiopian Airlines which flies to around 60 African cities. The hope is that patients will stop in the city for medical services rather than flying on to the West, or countries such as Turkey, or India. Africans spend more than $5 billion annually traveling outside the continent, according to Roha’s analysis of statistics from the World Bank and the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Many people are seeking advanced medical treatment especially as noncommunicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, and hypertension rise across the continent. Ethiopians spend an estimated $500 million on medical tourism.

SEMAFOR