According to a publication by the Thai Ministry of Imports and Exports the Japanese make up by far the biggest group of medical tourists in Thailand. That surprised me, since I never encountered that many in my frequent visits to Thai hospitals. When discussing this question with the webmaster of www.surgery-thailand.com , she mentioned that in her opinion most of them come to Thailand on package tours which include a few rounds of golf and a medical check-up. Who would have thought that medical check-ups are such big business?

Number two on the list by the way are Americans, followed by South-East Asians and British, all around the 100,000 patients mark. The total of all medical tourists in 2005 is given as 1,103,095. That should include me :-)

These numbers are best taken with a grain of salt, but they are interesting nevertheless. The oddest numbers I found on the list are for Germans: they jump from 20,000 in 2003 up to 370,0000 in 2004 and falls back to 40,000 in 2005. On second thought, maybe these numbers more than anything indicate how questionable official statistics are.