There are a lot of people who are going abroad for various medical treatments in a phenomenon that has been dubbed "medical tourism". Many of these patients are specifically interested in reproductive tourism in which they travel abroad to get infertility treatments at a more affordable cost than they can get in their home countries. There are certainly benefits to reproductive tourism but studies indicate that the risks outweigh the benefits and that reproductive tourism should be recommended against for all patients.
"In some cases, couples who go abroad to receive IVF might not know where the eggs come from, and sometimes women will become pregnant with multiple embryos -- the single biggest risk for a woman and fetus during IVF, researchers said." (source)
The problem is basically that there is no international set of standards for IVF and other types of infertility treatment. This means that the care that you have researched at home is not necessarily going to be the care that you receive in a foreign country. This puts the mother and the child at risk and gives a very good reason to avoid reproductive tourism despite the apparent benefits.
Question of the Day: Are there cases in which the drawbacks of reproductive tourism are outweighed by the benefits?
