Each week, flights leaving Bole International Airport for New Delhi, Mumbai and Dubai carry more than businesspeople and tourists. Among the passengers are members of the ailing middle class, clutching medical files and hard-won foreign currency to pay for treatment abroad.
The quiet exodus is the uncomfortable backdrop to a bold ambition by Ethiopia’s contemporary political leaders. In a New Year interview with the state-owned Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), and again while inaugurating a facility in Lafto, Addis Abeba’s Mayor, Adanech Abiebie, set out a plan to make the capital a major destination for medical tourism within five years.
The ambition is, undoubtedly, worth pursuing. If only she is not running a city Administration that aspires to draw patients of foreign nationalities while its own citizens fly out for care it cannot reliably provide.
Granted, attracting outsiders may earn foreign currency. However, keeping Ethiopians at home demands something harder to buy. Dependable hospitals, well-compensated trained specialists, and confidence in the treatment on offer provide that assurance, which should be the real project.
Ironically, Ethiopia keeps no verified record of how many patients leave, where they go, or what they actually spend on medical care. One estimate puts the number at about 100,000 a year, spending about 7,000 dollars each, on average. Some put the true figure, with travel and lodging, near one billion dollars.
Other, more conservative estimates put the number at about 10,000 departures and up to 100 million dollars, about 10,000 dollars per patient. Although no research or study is available to reconcile these numbers, the savings target rests on the higher estimate. Federal officials hope to halve departures and retain close to 350 million dollars.
A good start would be to commission research that gives policymakers and the healthcare sector reliable data and dependable insights to act on.
Global reviews published in 2026, covering the decade to 2025, add rigour on safety, trust, waiting times and ethics, but no Ethiopian totals. Hospital research at Tikur Anbessa tends to focus on drug resistance or records rather than patient flow.
Where they go is clearer. India dominates, especially for cancer, cardiac surgery, orthopaedics, and transplants, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, and higher-cost centres in Thailand, Europe, and the United States taking the rest. Ethiopian applications for Indian medical visas have been climbing by about 40pc a year since 2022.
Why they go matters more, according to a recent study of oncology providers across 17 African countries. It found that 92pc knew patients who had referred themselves abroad and 75pc had sent patients overseas, with India taking 94pc of those referrals.
Tellingly, the leading reason was not equipment but belief. Greater access to technology, including radiotherapy, was the main driver for about half the physicians, yet 93pc believed patients left because they thought foreign hospitals were better. Seven in 10 cited mistrust of local systems, and six in 10 pointed to the prestige of treatment abroad.
Cancer has been the fastest-growing slice of global medical tourism, expanding by about 21.9pc a year over the past decade. Yet some of these journeys were needless. Breast cancer was the most cited unwarranted referral, ahead of blood and prostate cancers. Families spent their savings anyway, driven by fear and the marketing of hospitals abroad.
However, the bill is heavy, and not only for families. Treatment, travel and lodging were the greatest burden for patients. Receiving hospitals often piled on tests, while 86pc of providers judged overseas care a serious economic loss for the countries patients leave.
Sponsored referrals, meant to help, told their own story. Half said sponsorship favoured the wealthy or well-connected. Close to 15pc of oncologists reported being pressed or paid by officials to approve foreign referrals.
Global medical tourism, worth somewhere between 24 billion and 100 billion dollars, moves about eight million patients a year, each spending 3,500 to 5,800 dollars. Nearly two in five of them go to African destinations led by South Africa and Kenya.
For Ethiopia, a weaker Birr and tight foreign-exchange rules make care abroad more expensive. The cruel irony is that the same hard-currency shortage that drives patients out also starves hospitals at home of the equipment, medicines, and supplies that would keep them in.
By mid-2026, according to Secure Africa Partners, reserves covered only about 2.1 months of imports, with a foreign-exchange backlog of about 1.4 billion dollars.
The gaps are not only financial; long waits, weak quality assurance, too few advanced specialist centres, and limited international accreditation undermine existing services and threaten the new ones being planned. The kidney-transplant programme shows this gap. Consumable shortages have halted it for long stretches. Follow-up has faltered because of shortages of immunosuppressive drugs, laboratory reagents, and reliable pathology and microbiology.
Patients need continuity after surgery as much as the surgery itself. Doctors are scarcer still, with estimates of one physician for every 10,000 to 40,000 people and acute shortages in specialist fields. Chasing foreign patients without training more doctors sets locals and visitors up to compete for the same overworked staff.
To be sure, the opportunity is real. Ethiopia already treats patients from Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, for liver, intestinal and cancer care. Increasingly complex surgery is available for patients from Somalia, who travel to Addis Abeba for cardiovascular, kidney and fertility treatment.
Addis Abeba’s mild climate, location and specialists lend it an edge. The Ministry of Health’s 2024 road map sees an East African market worth more than 175 million dollars and a leading African role within a decade.
Upgrades at Tikur Anbessa, private hospitals such as Habari and Bethesda, new PET scanners, Addis Hiwot’s 16-storey tower, and a push for Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation all point in the right direction. Lower costs, good airline links and tourist draws could help the capital compete with Nairobi.
Yet buildings and machines can only be the less difficult part. They cannot supply the specialists to run them, the follow-up to finish what surgery begins, or the trust that keeps an anxious patient in Addis Abeba.
This would entail training and paying doctors well enough to keep them, investing in oncology staff and treatment as much as in wards, and stocking hospitals so that treatment is dependable rather than intermittent. It means financing care properly.
Affordable treatment is not only about cheap care, since hospitals need enough revenue to hire specialists and keep medicines in stock. Patients need predictable charges and insurance, not ruinous bills. Stripping away blanket subsidies should go hand in hand with broader insurance, lest reform shift the cost onto households.
The Health Ministry’s road map calls for public-private partnerships, specialised healthcare cities, and investment incentives. The capital’s 2026 plan leans on hospital expansion, imported medical equipment, some of it duty-free. Their worth depends on the treatment, staffing and supplies behind them.
None of this argues against welcoming patients from other countries. Their dollars are useful, and can help pay for better care. But retaining foreign currency should never become the measure of success.
The truer measure is whether Ethiopians still leave for overseas to seek specialised medical care.
https://horntodaynews.com/war-has-returned-to-ethiopias-tigray-region/
Can they, at last, be treated at home?
Answer this, and patients will come from abroad of their own accord. The capital’s ambition, in the end, begins with making specialised medicine work for the people who already live here.
Fortune Team
https://addisfortune.news/courting-foreign-patients-as-ethiopians-fly-abroad-for-care
