A FAMILY in the mighty USA had read about an advert that for a $40,000 cover of a cheque, their 27-year-old daughter could get a cure.

When it was all done with, she would no longer be required to go through the pangs of daily injections of insulin, (the hormone secreted by the pancreas, without which sugar accumulates in the blood, to levels that could kill you).

The package, which should be new, is called "Stem-Cell-Therapy." In its simplest form, for the understanding of the man and woman in the street, the procedure, (utilising what is called embryonal cells, "fetal cells"), induces the body of the patient to produce cells that normally produce insulin.

The type-I diabetes mellitus, which the wealthy family's daughter has, will be a thing of the past, when the wonder-procedure should work perfectly.

The new cells, which the pancreas should now be stimulated to produce, will manufacture enough insulin, such that a diet-regimen should be a thing of the past.

Miss Fung Ling, an American of Chinese origin, would thereafter be able to ingurgitate any kind, and any amount of food of her choice, and the blood sugar should stay normal.

Unfortunately, the "New Thing" in medicine isn't yet allowed in America, where the biggest money in the world stays. The political wrangle, having started with Bill Clinton's administration, and which lingered into that of George Bush Jnr's, isn't likely to come to conclusion anytime soon.

In Thailand, things are easier. If you can cough out $40,000, the procedure is there for the taking. The health tourism being talked about should be understood in its proper sense.

It isn't flying to Thailand, or Japan , and visiting "hot geysers", or eating a sulfa-boiled eggs, that is called Health Tourism. Another example is when you may fly to Mauritius and get a kidney transplant for $15,000, instead of getting it in America for four times as much.

In 1951, when a man received a kidney from his identical twin brother in a Boston Massachusetts Hospital, this procedure had only been tried unsuccessfully previously, in France. The lucky twin brother lived for almost thirty years with the new kidney.

He was clever enough to have married a nurse from the same hospital, who inherited him. The procedure was to find strong feet in Europe, and as of now, it is only in Africa South of the Sahara where it isn't common.

Human-heart-transplantation does not hit headlines any longer. The essence of stem cells-therapy, and organ transplantations can be done in a fairly large number of countries in the world today.

There was a unique kind of Health Tourism during the life-time of the late Christian Barnard, a Pioneer Heart Surgeon, who worked in Cape Town, South Africa, and reached world-fame in the mid-sixties, till his death some ten years ago. He was in his mid-sixties when on daily basis he transplanted a couple of hearts, and repaired cardio-valvular abnormalities as well, which otherwise were, or would be incompatible with life.

South African Embassies around the world had been given the standing orders by their home Government, to issue visas to people of all nationalities, who might need heart transplantations, or "any repairs" of the heart.

South Africa was capable, and willing, to render this service to mankind, in spite of an awful racial policy at home. Indeed, if you walked to any office of the South African Airlines, you would be given a visa there as well. South Africa, in spite of damnation coming from the whole world because of apartheid, enjoyed a tremendous amount of health tourism, and prestige.

Nowhere else in the world was so much agog in open-heart surgery, as did happen at the Groote Schwuur Hospital, in South Africa then. "Medical wonders" do not always come from America.

Perhaps, African countries can learn to carry further what South Africa pioneered in the sixties.