By now, the term health tourism would have made its rounds across the world. What is it exactly, you might ask?
Stacking up to health worldwide
To put this in context, Malaysia has been one of the major names when it comes to tourism and is among the top travel destinations in the world. Health tourism is one sector that has generated much revenue for the country in the last decade. When was initially promoted, there were 643,000 medical tourists back in 2011. Some 7 years later (2018, this number has grown to 1.2 million. This puts Malaysia on the world map, making it a leading destination for international patients. In terms of revenue, it was $127 million in 2011 and by 2018 it has grown three-fold to $362 million.
What makes Malaysia so attractive?
There is no doubt that such numbers just show how significant Malaysia has become in this sector not only in the Asian region but in the world as well. A recent study showed that it was the strong backing from the Malaysian government that has created a self-sufficient eco-system for this economic sector to thrive especially with collaboration between the public and private organizations. This is spearheaded by the MHTC or Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council.
Malaysia’s most attractive services are in cardiology and fertility treatments. To date, it has more than 30 treatment centers with state-of-the-art equipment for heart treatment. As for fertility services, the success rate is higher than the expected average of the world.
Expanding health tourism worldwide
The MHTC is under the purview of the Ministry of Finance where it has been working relentlessly to promote Malaysia as the top health tourism destination. The idea is to target more patients from every part of the world. To date, Malaysia has attracted patients from the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Australia, India, The US, Japan and China. Meanwhile, MHTC continues to look for new partners to expand its reach to more parts globally.
On the other hand, it promotes about 80 afflicted hospitals to countries in the Middle East, Cambodia, Brunei and Vietnam, among others. In the last 5 years, the compound annual growth rate has been steadily improving which has been about 16 to 17%. This is proven through its efforts to boost the quality of healthcare, affordability and the best experience for patients. The initial forecast was to reach 2 million international patients by 2020. This ambition, however, has been hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic but once the vaccines are out and life goes back to normal, health tourism is expected to return back on its course and expected to grow as before.