Medical tourism booms in country

RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business

From tourism to education and health to bio-diversity, UAE has made considerable strides in diversifying its economic prospects. Medical tourism is one such sector that is helping UAE to add to its highly regarded image of being a shopping or luxury holiday destination.
Medical tourism has considerably added to the overall tourism sector of UAE and the recent win of ‘Highly Recommended Destination of the Year’ for medical tourism at the International Medical Travel Journal (IMTJ) Medical Award 2016 in Spain stands testimony to the fact.
Humaid Al Qutami, chairman of DHA’s Board of Directors and its director-general, said in an official statement during the launch of the world’s first comprehensive electronic medical tourism portal,
“Dubai is at the pinnacle of safety, security, creativity and innovation and has over 200 nationalities living here. It has been a pioneer and leader in global development and by choosing to be a global hub of medical tourism it will redefine development on the map of this region.”
Terming ‘awareness’ as the main driver of medical tourism worldwide, Anisa Vrabac, Dubai Cosmetic Surgery clinic Spokesperson and Partner told Emirates Business, “People around the world are starting to become more educated about healthy lifestyles; in other words people are caring more about their bodies, smoking less and exercising more. It is actually estimated that by 2025, life expectancy will be 73 years old compared to 48 years in 1955.This is one of the main reasons that people are looking at maintenance treatments from early on thereby adding value to the global medical tourism sector.”
Reports state that Emirates is closer to attracting more than 500,000 medical tourists annually by 2020. Also, according to official figures, Dubai alone hosted almost 630,900 total medical tourists. Out of these, 47 percent were international medical tourists who generated over AED1.5 billion.
“The medical tourism, especially the beauty procedures sub-sector, in the UAE is the highest in the world. We have stringent quality and safety standards compared to other international medical tourism hubs. These standards have led Dubai to become a major hub in medical tourism, recently bypassing some other GCC countries that were ahead of us, “added Vrabac.
As the number of medical tourists is increasing, it is expected that Dubai will have around 22 new
hospitals including (18 private and four public) in the next few years while by 2020 there will be more than 4,000 health facilities and 40,000 health specialists working
in the sector.