In the first week of January, Habari Medical Plaza opened its doors in Addis Abeba, staking its place at the centre of the new push into medical tourism.

The facility, established by Akeza Teame (MD) and his wife, Melat Abate, at an investment of half a billion Birr, is the latest in a string of private medical centres hoping to reverse the flow of Ethiopians seeking treatment abroad and attract patients from neighbouring countries.

Occupying 1,300Sqm, including parking, the Habari Medical Plaza can handle nearly 700 patients at once, with 6,000Sqm of patient care space spread across six floors. It offers 15 specialist services, with an additional IVF centre set to open, and employs 30 specialists. Notably, its services include some rare offerings, such as ketamine therapy for psychosis, sleep monitoring, stress tests and Holter monitoring for heart and blood pressure.

A father of four children, it took the 54-year old Akeza over a year to repurpose the rented building not far from the Civil Service University. He recalled the early days of his career, after returning from the United States 17 years ago, when Ethiopia had only 1,000 specialist doctors and almost no subspecialists.

“The country of millions had only a few specialised doctors," said Akeza, speaking of his motivation for establishing Habari and four other medical centres, including the now-dissolved St. Yared Hospital.

For a country with 420 hospitals, fewer than 50 of which are classified as tertiary, Habari’s focus is on diagnostics and laboratory work. For now, it is not admitting inpatients. Instead, it refers those requiring overnight care to sister institutions such as the American Medical Centre (AMC), Samaritan Surgical Centre (SSC), and Axon Strook & Spine Centre. The Hospital is also exploring digital healthcare, with HabariDoc offering online diagnosis and appointment bookings, as well as a system that allows patients to control and share their own medical documents.

Habari’s pharmacy wholesale business supplies the Group’s pharmacies and is also expanding its delivery services.

An American-trained medical doctor, Akeza’s ambition is to offer high-quality diagnostic services at lower costs, with the hope of halting the tide of patients leaving Ethiopia for basic check-ups, a trend he believes is costing the country a billion dollars a year in lost foreign currency.

“We work on it with a cost-conscious mind,” he said, recalling the days when Ethiopia had only two MRI machines.

He pointed out that people now spend up to 7,000 dollars for travel, treatment and accommodation abroad, even for routine check-ups that could be completed at home for 500 dollars.

Asayehegn Tekeste has been a director of programmes at Project HOPE since 2019 and is an expert in international public health, specialising in HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, nutrition, and community mobilisation in Ethiopia and South Sudan. He has held senior leadership roles, including Chief of Party and Deputy Chief of Party, at Save the Children International and Management Sciences for Health on major USAID-funded programs. His earlier positions include capacity building, emergency nutrition, and community mobilisation roles with Save the Children, UNICEF, and local health institutions, focusing on program design, training, and cross-functional team leadership.

“It's still unique and a better approach for the patients and doctors,” he said.

Asayehegn, who began his career teaching anatomy, physiology, and first aid at Central Health College in 2003, agreed that the medical plaza model is a helpful response to Ethiopia’s shrinking healthcare employment market. He sees the new centres as a way to retain medical professionals and reduce foreign currency outflow.

He believes the current target is "high-net-worth patients" who previously sought care abroad, and hopes future business models will expand to serve middle- and low-income households. He urged government subsidies to make such services more widely accessible.

However, Asayehegn noted that the high costs faced by these facilities are mainly due to their location and scale.

Globally, the demand for cross-border healthcare is growing. The medical tourism market serves around eight million patients each year, with the average amount spent per patient estimated at between 3,500 dollars and 5,800 dollars. India’s medical tourism industry accounted for a large share of GDP, while countries like Tunisia and South Africa have also benefited from foreign patients seeking treatment.

The term “medical tourism” now has official sanction in Ethiopia. Health and tourism authorities openly acknowledge a persistent outflow of healthcare-related resources. But, there is no official, consolidated dataset that lists how many Ethiopians travel abroad for medical care, where they travel, what conditions they seek treatment for, or how much foreign currency leaves the country as a result. What exists instead is a set of partial, and often recycled, estimates rather than verified counts.

Nearly 10,000 Ethiopians are believed to travel abroad for medical treatment each year, spending, on average, about 10,000 dollars per patient. Taken at face value, the annual foreign currency outflow would reach 100 million dollars. Patients continue to seek treatment overseas for advanced oncology, cardiac care, neurosurgery, transplants, and complex diagnostics, services that are either unavailable domestically or perceived to be of lacking quality.

Although no official breakdown by destination exists, India is the most frequently visited destination, particularly for oncology, cardiac surgery, orthopaedics, and transplants. The Middle East, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and, increasingly, Turkey, attracts patients seeking high-end tertiary care and comprehensive diagnostic packages. Thailand is often cited as a benchmark for medical tourism, offering internationally accredited care at prices lower than those in Europe or North America. Europe and the United States account for a smaller but exceptionally high-spending minority of cases, involving specialised oncology, neurosurgery, or transplantation.

National medical and wellness tourism roadmaps frame the outflow as a material drain on scarce foreign exchange and use it to justify large-scale investments in domestic tertiary care. Addis Abeba’s city-level tourism strategies similarly cast medical tourism as both a defensive response to outbound travel and a potential source of inbound demand.