Medical Tourism with a Twist: Australians Seeking Healing in Brazil
Cristina Rocha, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney
In recent years more and more Australians and other Westerners have been packing their bags for a two-week sojourn in central Brazil. The package includes healing, spiritual growth, and a holiday in the tropics. Tour guides advertise the miraculous powers of John of God, a Brazilian faith healer who performs actual surgeries on patients, on websites, DVDs and books. This paper is based on ethnographic research conducted in Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. Here I explore the stories of John of God’s Australian followers and their reasons for taking the long and expensive trip to see the healer. I argue that the reinstatement of a connection between healing and religion and the construction of context that gives meaning to illness are two important factors in patients shunning Western medicine in favour of alternative practices.
