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| Friday, 5 December 2003 |
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Medical tourism industry : A regional center for health care by S. H. A. Careem For all those who have always looked towards hospitals in the west every time a traumatic medical emergency befell them, there will soon be option closer to home. Dubai Health Care Centre (DHCC) aims to bridge the gap between Europe and Southeast Asia by establishing a regional centre for customers and patients to receive world class health care and enjoy timely medical and wellness services. "By 2010, Dubai Health Care city will become a globally acknowledged location of choice for health care and a centre of excellence for specialist medical services, medical education, life science research, and technology leveraged health care services," promises His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid-al-Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Defence Minister of the UAE and President of the Dubai Development and Investment Authority. Dubai Health City aims to provide the highest quality health care services to medical care and wellness seekers from the region by creating a world class cluster of health care professionals and service providers. DHCC has at its core, the University Medical Complex which will be surrounded by private sector health care businesses as well as a medical and wellness cluster. A university hospital is the first of the three core components of university medical complex. The second core component is the medical school and the third component is the life science research centre. It is expected that diabetes will become a major research area providing the region with access to valuable information on how to tackle this illness, which is rampant in the region. The launch of DHCC also brings a new dimension to Dubai's tourism offering - the medical tourism industry. This opens significant business opportunities to local and international investors, regional businesses and the global health care industry. Only 20 per cent of the world's top health care and pharmaceutical companies operate in Dubai and the new value proposition is an inventive way to attract the majority of the remaining 80 per cent. At a time when many industries are still on shaky ground, health tourism - a sector that has grown up around patients travelling for surgery and other health care - is increasingly becoming the fastest growing sector of both the travel and medical industries. It seems that half the world has discovered the money to be made by marketing its health care facilities to a global audience. India has turned medical tourism into a multi-million industry, attracting West Asian and American tourists with well-trained doctors and low prices. In Cuba the industry is thriving with one in 20 visitors to the island having some kind of surgery there. In South Africa, several travel agencies have sprung up offering plastic surgery and safaris as a package deal. Health tourism has even expanded to the point where there are now international brokers and websites that exist only to find would-be patients the operation they want in almost any country they fancy. The $ 1.8 billion Health care city project envisaged by the emirate aims to capture a market that is expanding both regionally and globally. Until recent years more than 5,000 Arab patients, not counting the Gulf expatriates, would fly annually to the UK and USA for health care treatments, being in the fortunate position to be able to pay for - or qualify for - quality care in some of the most expensive health care systems in the world. |
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