Low costs with high service quality are the two draw cards of the healthcare tourism industry, suits played strongly by many Asian countries. This has helped them attract a multitude of foreign customers, with estimates of more than 1.6mil people purchasing travel and healthcare tours to Asia.

Travel combined with medical examinations, treatment or cosmetic surgery posts a growth rate of 20% to 30% per year in Asia, valued at a heady US$500mil per annum for Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and India alone.

Last year, Thailand received more than 1mil foreign visitors who cited both travel and healthcare as their reasons for entry. Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok offers a wide variety of healthcare services for foreigners. Singapore is also known for its high-grade healthcare services and competitive costs.

The cost for a hip replacement in Singapore is equivalent to two thirds of costs incurred for a similar operation in the US, according to Abacus. Singapore welcomes around 370,000 healthcare travellers. This island state aims to pull 1mil such visitors a year, stitching up $1.6bil in turnover by 2012.

The travel – healthcare industry in India has been posting an annual average growth rate of 30% and the country receives around 150,000 foreign visitors a year seeking healthcare. By 2010 India could be earning revenue of at least $2.2bil from the industry, as “India provides first-grade services at third world prices,” according to the Abacus report.

In the first half of 2005, Malaysia attracted 100,000 foreign healthcare visitors and the country hopes to earn $590mil from this field in the next five years.

Customers on the travel – healthcare circuit are predominantly from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Middle East, China, as well as some from the US and Europe.

According to Vietnam News Agency, the country has 1,030 hospitals, 95.6% of which are public. The percentage of doctors holding post-graduate diplomas is 45%.

Quality of health services at Vietnamese hospitals has improved, with a fatality rate of 5.7/1,000, down nearly 40% from 2000. Eight hospitals are eligible to conduct kidney and marrow transplants and many hospitals are rated to perform high-tech treatment methods, such as in-vitro insemination, open-heart operations, Pharco method eye surgery, and bone transplants.

HCM City has long been a destination for overseas Vietnamese seeking cosmetic surgery and healthcare services of agreeable quality at extremely low prices, especially compared to the US, Europe and some regional countries.

Dental services commonly attract foreign clientele to The Tu Du Hospital in HCM City, and the increasing needs of Cambodian patients have led Cho Ray hospital to open services in Phnom Penh.

However, these statistics are of little relevance to the healthcare travel industry. State management bodies in Vietnam, including the Ministry of Health, have no statistics on the country’s earnings from travel-healthcare area, suggesting that income levels have been so marginal they are not worth tracking.

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