CAIRO: An estimated 44,000 medical tourists have come to Egypt in the first half of 2015, according to a recent report by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS.)
This figure marks an increase of 3,000 compared to the corresponding period in 2014, which welcomed an estimated 41,000 tourists.
Tourism, Egypt’s second most important source of national income after the Suez Canal, provides direct and indirect employment to up to 12.6 percent of the country’s workforce.
According to a separate CAPMAS report, the rate of general tourists from Western Europe represented 38.2 percent, followed by tourists from Eastern Europe in second place at 33.9 percent, with Middle Eastern tourists at 17 percent, with holidaymakers from Russia, the U.K., and Saudi Arabia topping the list of the three regions respectively.
Revenues from tourism, comprising 11.3 percent of Egypt’s gross domestic product (GDP), witnessed a sharp decline in the aftermath of the political instability following Egypt’s 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.