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Vanity Tourism or Plastic Surgery in Vacation
14:06 an intense suntan in the skin seems normal when returning of
vacations, but how's it going to return with the biggest breasts, a plastic
surgery nasal or with less weight and without wrinkles. Sounds strange,
but the trips that include that type of transformations are promoted by
travel agents and plastic surgeons from Colombia a strategy to attract
a growing demand of tourists in search of changes to their aspect.
"It was bothersome with the size of my breasts and it had won a lot of weight", Mauikai Gold, 21 years old, said to Associate Press that she planned a trip to Colombia to come undone of those concerns from Miami. She investigated among their friends, it consulted half dozen of local doctors, she asked in their beauty parlor and finally Gold chose the plastic surgeon to who would trust him that delicate and expensive mission Bogota.
This woman that works in the business of the entertainment, was made remove more than 25 kilograms of grease of her body in a liposculpture or liposuction, the size of her breasts increased and fixed the form of her nose.
This
saving in the prices and the good reputation of which they enjoy the
medical and hospital services in Colombia is some of the advantages
that the travel agents and the surgeons try to promote abroad.
They look for the tourist peak that lives this South American country to take advantage that in the 2005, for the first time in more than two decades, it attracted a million tourists, according to the Trade and Tourism Institute.
"Of that whole people that is entering (to the country), at least 3% comes to be made medical treatments to Colombia that they were 21,000 people approximately in the 2004 and in the 2005 was 30,000", said Antonio Crespo, manager of the travel agency Colombia Tours Solutions.
"We help with the hotels & accommodation, the transports, if they need air tickets we can help them and we offer them the whole accompaniment when the patients come", the manager explained.
"Then the doctor only concentrates on his medical part and he knows that there is a company that he is helping them with the person that came" from another country, he added.
The packages that it offer include the medical treatment, the infirmary service, treatments post operative, insurance trip, transfers during the demurrage, lodging in hotel, a tourist guide and air tickets.
The promotion of the vanity tourism fits inside a modality that charged a new dimension after negotiating a commercial treaty with United States, because the Colombia president Alvaro Uribe announced fiscal benefits (open areas) for the medical sector.
"We intend in next days to dictate an ordinance so that there are hospital open areas so that more medical tourists come to Colombia, hospital tourists", Uribe said when announcing to the Colombian people the end of the commercial negotiations with United States.
"Cali,
Armenia, Medellin, Bogota, among other, they are cities that many patients
of the exterior receive, for that reason we will take advantage of the
doctors, hospitals, nurses, with the hospital open areas that will bring
them big savings as regards taxes", added the Colombian
president.
The plastic surgeon Andres Mejia assured in interview with AP that "Colombia is at this time world power in plastic surgery... in fact because people are catching a culture in the one which if I don't like my nose I operate it and not problem!, if I don't like this little grease I take off because for that the plastic surgery exists".
Gold coincided in that "if I will spend that quantity of money, then I want to make sure that it is safe. You are always playing with your health when you have a plastic surgery and for that reason it is necessary to be very careful in what you choose and where" to make it.
She chose Colombia because "is much more close that other countries and because the reputation that its woman are very beautiful it is partly because they are in favor of the plastic surgeries".
Gold was initially contacted in an internet forum, of several that exist where people interested in plastic surgeries formulate doubts and they share the experience and they are numerous those that traveled to Colombia to be made operate.
Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery
Official statistics don't exist on the number of tourists that they arrive to the country to change their image, but Mejia says that in cities like Cali "the volume is gigantic".
Alejandro Jaimes president of the Colombian Society of Plastic Surgery, manifested that "in the last two years the quantity of come patients of other parts has come in increase... because they have knowledge that our plastic surgery and aesthetics are very well positioned at world level".
Crespo he mentioned that there is patient that come of near countries as Ecuador, Panama, the Antilles, but especially from "United States and Spain have been bought important that are beginning to come to see the kindness of the Colombian medicine".
Up to this time there is not an institutional strategy to promote this type of tourism, but among the factors that have catapulted the fame of the Colombian medicine it is the surgery to which underwent the star of the soccer one year ago Diego Armando Maradona in Cartagena, in the Colombian Caribbean.
"Maradona is a world idol and everybody was very sad for him and now look how it is, it changed him the life for the surgery. That attracts a lot of more people", Mejia said.
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