Last week, a review looking at how much botched medical tourism is costing the NHS was published in BMJ Open. It made for some shocking reading. The researchers found that complications arising from surgery abroad cost the NHS “from £1,058 to £19,549 per patient”.

For the uninitiated, medical tourism is when people travel abroad for surgery, usually because it is significantly cheaper than having it done privately in the UK. Most commonly that means cosmetic procedures – hair transplants, weight loss surgery, tummy tucks and so forth. Turkey is the most popular destination, accounting for over 60 per cent of all the cases identified in the paper.

But while heading overseas for procedures might reduce the cost, if there are complications once you are back home – and the review picks out horrors like infections, incisions splitting, and fluids leaking out of the stomach after gastric surgery – it usually falls on the NHS to pick up the pieces.

Predictably, the reaction was outrage, with demands for the NHS to refuse treatment to anyone daft enough to have their tits done in Istanbul. LBC radio host, Tom Swarbrick, said on This Morning: “I think some personal responsibility for the cost of fixing it actually might act as a bit of a blockage to go.” 

And restaurant critic, William Sitwell, took an even firmer line when chatting to Vanessa Feltz on Channel 5: “I think if you’re deranged enough to........

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