Luxor is at the heart of Egypt’s medical tourism push

Travel writer Lucie Duff Gordon was among 19th-century Europeans who spent long periods of time in Luxor. Famed for its Pharaonic sites, the Egyptian city’s dry air — warm even in winter — was recommended as respite for a range of ailments. Such was its appeal that British travel agent Thomas Cook, a major provider of Nile River cruises, opened a hospital for foreigners as well as locals.

Egypt’s authorities are hoping to revive that legacy as they seek to carve out a bigger slice of the global healthcare tourism market — worth around $34 billion last year according to Grand View Research — and compete with more established destinations such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates in providing services from major surgical procedures to dentistry and cosmetics.

The government sees the drive benefiting from the North African country’s location at the crossroads of three continents, and working in tandem with a booming hospitality industry that’s ridden out the worst effects of the Middle East’s recent conflicts. At the Grand Egyptian Museum last month, it launched online services designed to help international patients access care more easily.

Increasingly at the center of it all is the Egypt Healthcare Authority (EHA), which launched a medical tourism initiative called “In Egypt We Care.”

The independent public authority operates nearly 400 medical facilities nationwide, including hospitals, laboratories and clinics.

It’s developing a network of private medical tourism services in prime spots such as Aswan and the Red Sea coast as well as Luxor, famed for the Karnak temple and the Valley of the Kings, where Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered. There, six hospitals with hotel-like suites offer specialized facilities for obstetrics, pediatrics and radiology.

Egypt has “the ability to combine medical and traditional tourism,” EHA Chairman Ahmed El-Sobky said in an interview. “An international patient can receive advanced healthcare while enjoying tourism, cultural and entertainment attractions.”

The health tourists of the 1800s suffered mostly from pulmonary diseases and came from Britain and the U.S.

Gordon made the city her home, and died in Egypt. Others, including Florence Nightingale and Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife arrived for shorter stays.

Last year, EHA facilities received 13,370 foreign patients, up from 2,075 in 2022, according to data shared for this report, attracting some 124 nationalities from Arab, African, Asian, European and American nations.

EHA is planning to add 5,000 more medical sites over the next six years, with public-private partnerships playing a role, El-Sobky said. The expansion will involve new facilities for some of the most in-demand procedures: cardiovascular, bariatric and cosmetic surgery as well as in vitro fertilization and advanced dental care.

For now, income from medical visits remains relatively low, but El-Sobky sees it more than doubling to $6 million this year from $3.8 million in 2025, with almost 8,000 foreign patients registered through July.

There’s no single nationwide figure for medical tourism revenue because spending is spread across other private and public providers, and is not yet collected via one central reporting system. Currently, Turkey leads regional medical tourism rankings for value and scale while the UAE is ahead for premium care and luxury.

Egypt “cannot win simply by copying” their examples, according to Emre Atceken, co-founder of WeCure, a London-based company specialized in global medical tourism.

“It must carve out a distinct, well-defined niche to give international patients a real reason to switch,” he said. “Breaking into established patient flows is the real battle.”

While medical tourism can offer lower costs and faster access, there are downsides for foreign patients. The World Health Organization and World Medical Association caution that savings can disappear fast if anything goes wrong, and that questions of accountability can be complicated.

There are also domestic concerns.

Although WHO says Egypt has made significant progress in improving healthcare for its more than 108 million-strong population, unequal access remains a challenge.

That could worsen if top surgeons, specialists, and nursing staff are drawn out of the public sector unchecked, leaving the public reliant on understaffed state facilities.

The EHA’s wider mandate is to renovate public healthcare facilities. Egypt in 2024 passed a law letting the private sector establish, manage, operate and develop public medical sites.

“Whether medical tourism harms or elevates domestic care comes down to government oversight,” Atceken said. “Smart markets use regulatory levers or tax structures to channel private international revenue back into public healthcare upgrades, ensuring foreign capital serves to lift the national health standard as a whole.”