Across Southeast Asia, healthcare liberalisation is leading to profound social, economic and political changes. This is manifest in the shifting onus of care from the state to private individuals as well as the growing transnational flows of people, goods and services linked to health and care in the wake of trade agreements (e.g., AFTA and GATS) that treat health care as a commodity. In Malaysia, ‘healthcare travel’ has been seen as a driver for economic growth for over a decade. Significant investment is being made in the infrastructure and human capital necessary to promote the country as both a global and regional medical hub to foreign patients. At the same time, such investment raises concerns about the commodification of health care, the potential for increasing internal brain-drain and the risk that investment in private health care may detract from and potentially impoverish the public healthcare system. This seminar is geared towards fostering academic, political and industry dialogue on the economic, social, political and ethical complexities posed by transnational mobility on health systems in transition within Southeast Asia.
Themes
This one-day seminar will be structured around three themes:
- State and capital in the Malaysian healthcare sector (political economy of the Malaysian health system in transition)
- Transnational mobility and healthcare in Southeast Asia (medical travel, retirement migration, incidental tourist-patients, migrant health, etc.)
- Healthcare commodification, rights and entitlements, equity, and access (regionalisation, market-based vs citizen-based entitlements, re-negotiating the social contract, etc.)
Organisers
- Prof Chan Chee Khoon, Department of Social & Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Malaysia
- Dr Meghann Ormond, Assistant Professor, Cultural Geography, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Contact information
For further details, please contact Meghann Ormond.