Why cancer patients are travelling to China

价格便宜10倍!老外组团来中国治癌症?

Asia Specific

2026-07-01

19 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Cancer patients are increasingly travelling to China for CAR-T therapy. How did China become a leader in cancer treatment and could it become a major medical tourism destination?
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  • Medical tourism has long been associated with countries like South Korea or Thailand.

  • You don't often think China.

  • But China is fast developing a medical niche, cutting-edge cell therapy for overseas cancer patients.

  • And it's doing it at a much lower price than in the West.

  • To go to either the USA or the UK would probably cost me about a million Australian dollars.

  • If I had complications, then it was probably going to bankrupt us.

  • When I added up what we'd spent in China, it was about 10 times cheaper.

  • So how is China crunching the costs and the treatment times for patients?

  • I'm Mariko in Singapore, and this is Asia Pacific from the BBC World Service.