Health tourism takes not more than 1% of all the tourist flow from Russia. In 2010 only 120 thousand Russians (from 12 million people who traveled abroad) had holidays for health or medical purposes. At the same time, the Russian health resorts received 4.5 million Russians (3% of the population of the country).

One of the main obstacles for the development of medical tourism in Russia the experts consider a limited government financial support in this sphere.

“In western countries any person can get some sanatorium treatment, while in Russia only disabled people have such opportunity,” said Nadezhda Menshina from Sankurtour. According to Ms Menshina, Russia doesn’t have any unified registre of health resorts: according to the statistics of the Ministry of Public Health and Social Development – 2400, according to Russian State Statistics Service we have 1400.

Besides, there are some problems with the infrastructure. For example, now Moscow has 44 hotels which can receive the invalids with wheelchair, however, it’s difficult to accommodate the groups, as the hotels have only 4-6 rooms for disabled people.

Meanwhile, according to the forecasts of the World Association of Public Health, in 10 years the medical tourism will be one of the most important spheres in world economy. The annual turnover of medical tourism in the world amounts to 60 billion USD. atorus.ru