The era of globalization allows for more connectivity between nations and cultures. This increase in international association gives citizens more availability to take advantage of opportunities in other nations, such as medical assistance and accompanying services. Current Issues and Emerging Trends in Medical Tourism focuses on the emerging phenomena of international travel by patients in search of improved healthcare services and treatment, wellness programs, and complementary recreational activities. Including extensive coverage and case studies focusing on patient mobility and new opportunities for health services across borders, this authoritative reference source is essential to the needs of healthcare providers, nonprofit organizations, students, and medical professionals seeking relevant research on the relationship between global travel and access to healthcare. This publication features innovative, research-based chapters spanning the spectrum of medical travel issues including, but not limited to, customer perceptions, ethical considerations, reproductive medicine, social media use, family caregivers, organ transplants, human trafficking, and surrogacy concerns.

This book explores how China’s Belt and Road Initiative through promoting a non-Western-centred geopolitical narrative is affecting the conservation and management of Belt and Road heritage sites. Considering the dynamics between academics, heritage professionals, and government officials, the inscription process and management of Silk Roads heritage sites, and the practice of China’s Belt and Road heritage diplomacy, the book examines how changing heritage conservation practices are influenced by politics and professionalism and negotiated in different ways across different nation states in the Belt and Road zones. Highlighting the different aims and outlooks of Chinese diplomacy, UNESCO and other international heritage conservation organisations, nation states as guardians of national interests, and local communities as custodians of everyday lived heritage, it shows how the Belt and Road Initiative has energized multilateral efforts in heritage diplomacy and management. It also discusses how the ‘professional’ status of heritage professionals, including practitioners engaged by governments and international organisations and also scholars and researchers who provide consultancy advice, is often not politics-free, with heritage professionals often co-opted into speaking for stakeholders, especially national governments.