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For many Canadian patients, heading out of country for treatment offers compelling benefits, from avoiding long wait lists at home, to saving money on private care and trying experimental therapies.

A new website to be officially launched Monday by a group of B.C. academics, however, suggests potential medical tourists give the idea some sober second thought.

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Drawing on real accounts and countering the pervasive marketing of overseas medical clinics on the Internet, the Simon Fraser University-based site raises many of the pitfalls of medical tourism.

Those include the possibility of suffering complications in less-developed nations, imposing on the health-care system after returning to Canada and creating inequities in the countries they visit.

“We’re not trying to say it’s never a reasonable thing to do, especially when people are facing life and death choices,” said Jeremy Snyder, an ethicist and health-sciences professor at SFU. “What we’re saying is ask yourself … ‘Is this something I absolutely need to be doing?’ ”