The size and scope of healthcare tourism in Emerging Markets is growing fast. The picture is very different from the developed world.

Having seen healthcare tourism fail to take off in the West, it is easy to underestimate its power in Emerging Markets. So here are examples.

The Nigerian government reckons Nigerians spent $1bn in 2014 on outbound healthcare tourism. That figure sounds high but Nigerians say it is the tip of the iceberg as many travel on non-medical visas. They estimate the total to be more like $3-4bn.

And Nigeria’s population of 173m is a fraction of the total African population of 1.1bn. Speaking at the IFC conference, a World Bank economist said: “On many flights from Africa to India two or three in every ten passengers is in a wheelchair.”

Or take Indonesia. There we were told last month that Indonesians spend $11bn on outbound tourism.

What is striking is perhaps the willingness of patients to travel long distances for healthcare. This can be inside countries. There is a huge internal healthcare tourism market, in Italy for instance, as patients from the south travel north to Milan for cancer and cardiology treatment. And it is the same in China. Hotels in Beijing are jam-packed with people waiting for a bed to come free in the big university hospitals.

Apart from saying:“Cor these are big figures!” what does this tell us about private healthcare services? It shows that there is huge potential and that large operators can build highly profitable operations on the back of medical tourism. Some already have. Indian hospital chain Fortis told us that a third of its patients in its bigger hospitals are healthcare tourists. And a third of that number is from Nigeria.