Materia Medica Malaysiana

Medical tourism boost

Private hospitals in the country raked in a whopping RM56 million from medical tourism in the first nine months of last year.
However, the figure could be much higher as some hospitals do not disclose their income from medical tourism though they are encouraged to do so by the Health Ministry, according to its parliamentary secretary, Lee Kah Choon.
There are 35 private hospitals involved in the promotion of health tourism with 14 of them having obtained the MS ISO 9001 accreditation. Another six have been awarded the Malaysia Standard Quality Hospital certification.
Seeing the potential in this field for hospitals as well as the nation, the Health Ministry is soon to set up a Malaysia Health Tourism Promotion Council, a corporatised body with highly specialised staff to promote Malaysia as a centre of excellence in medical tourism.
Lee said: "In order to promote medical tourism in a more active and co-ordinated manner, we need to set up the council with full-time staff to solely handle medical health promotions."
It is learnt that 80 per cent of the groundwork for the formation of the council has been completed and the staff appointed. An official announcement is expected anytime now.
At present, the National Health Tourism Promotion committee, headed by the Health Ministry's Director-General, Tan Sri Dr Mohd Taha Arif, handles all matters pertaining to health tourism with the assistance of five sub-committees to handle promotion, advertising, tax incentives, accreditation and fees.
Lee said the council hoped to enlist the support of the Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia (APHM) in obtaining details on the number of foreigners seeking treatment at their hospitals and the revenue derived to help it plan its projects and programmes to further boost medical tourism.