PlanetHospital, an established California-based medical tourism agency, has opened an office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to serve inbound and outbound medical tourists from the Gulf region.
"The Gulf has the potential to drive growth in medical tourism. It is not only a place where medical travellers come from, but it is also becoming a medical tourism destination itself thanks to major hospital development throughout the region," said Mohammed Alarifi, managing director of PlanetHospital in Jeddah.
In the past few years, the company has helped patients from the Middle East to secure advanced medical treatment abroad. With PlanetHospital Middle East, the company now will be aggressively promoting its ability to inbound medical tourists to the Gulf region hospitals. It will work with local new insurance providers to create a medical tourism based benefit, and eventually attract Middle Eastern expatriates in the US to come to the region for medical treatment, rather than going elsewhere.
PlanetHospital has been working to expand its business by teaming up with insurers interested in providing an overseas option for members. Company founder Rudy Rupak said they have been negotiating with a major US insurer but those plans are delayed until at least 2010, after the insurer became a prominent victim of the financial crisis. PlanetHospital does already offer a range of insured plans for specific countries and ethnic groups.
Since 2002,PlanetHospital has sent more than 2,000 patients to overseas hospitals.

China’s Ministry of Health is targeting illegal organ transplants, after reports surfaced that some hospitals were illegally doing organ surgeries for foreigners.
The ministry says that any medical institutions could have their licenses revoked if they cannot pass the ongoing qualification re-examination. At present, 164 medical institutions on the Chinese mainland are licensed to carry out organ transplants nationwide. The ministry has named 16 hospitals that have failed to comply with regulations on organ transplants. Under the National Organ Transplantation Committee and the ministry, an expert team will further evaluate other organ transplant practitioners.
Organ transplants in China are covered by the 2007 regulations that establish national oversight and credentials for Chinese transplant officials. The regulations ban organ trade, organ trafficking and transplant tourism for foreigners and establish a national organ donation system that includes deceased and living donors.
Official estimates indicate that 2 million Chinese need organ transplants each year, but only 20,000 operations are performed because of a severe shortage of donors. But still some hospitals sell organs to foreigners as a lucrative business. Three hospitals were penalized for illegally selling human organs to foreigners in 2008.
In February, the ministry launched an investigation into a report that 17 Japanese tourists each spent about $87,000 for liver or kidney transplant operations at an unidentified hospital in Guangzhou. There is a regular stream of reports from within hospitals, that some hospitals are totally ignoring the regulations, faking identities to fool authorities and still performing organ transplants on foreigners who were willing to pay. There is a gap between current regulations that insist on the informed consent of donors and regulate recipients, and reality. Organ brokers advertise on the internet and some medical staff at hospitals advise patients to find their own source of organs to avoid lengthy waits.
In the UK, from October, medical tourists from abroad will be banned from coming to the UK to receive donor organs as part of a new crackdown on medical tourism following cases of foreigners paying for organ donations from NHS donors. An official investigation revealed that earlier this year private patients from China, Libya and the United Arab Emirates were among 50 foreigners who were given new livers in the UK.
A report issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2007 named five international hotspots for organ transplants tourism as China, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt and Colombia.
In Egypt, inadequate legislation regulating human organ transplants has made Egypt the international hotspot for kidney trafficking. Up to 95 % of the 3000 legal kidney transplants per year, and hundreds of illegal ones, involve a commercial transaction. A nationwide ban on organ transplants from cadavers means all kidneys must be harvested from live donors. Most are sourced by organ brokers from destitute young Egyptians, who are coerced into selling their kidney to pay off debts or meet rising living costs. The organs are sold to clients, often wealthy Gulf Arabs, who use forged documents to circumvent a ban on transplants to unrelated or non-Egyptian recipients. Official periodic crackdowns on hospitals and clinics performing transplants for foreign clientele have done little to deter transplant tourism.
A draft law to regulate organ transplants was recently rejected by Egypt’s parliament. The bill had proposed to ban the sale of organs, prohibit transplants to foreigners, and impose sentences of up to 15 years in prison and 180,000 dollars fines for violations. It also sanctioned cadaveric organ transplants, which would have alleviated the pressure on live donors. Proponents expect the bill to pass when the legislature convenes in the fall.
In Colombia, all transplants, including those on foreigners, must be approved by Colombia’s national health agency, and a 2004 law calls for available organs to be offered to Colombians first. However, several websites offer new livers and kidneys in Colombia within 90 days, and it is increasingly becoming a medical transplant tourism for Americans, where there are thousands more in need of a transplant than can get one.

In a blow to Dubai’s hopes of becoming a major medical tourism destination, a new survey of UAE residents by leading newspaper, The National, says that more than 70 % would seek medical treatment overseas if they fell seriously ill. The survey reveals a widespread lack of confidence in the nation’s healthcare system. The survey was both of international expatriates, and Emiratis, with 57 % of the latter saying they would seek treatment abroad. That the vast majority of expatriates, who are mostly covered by health insurance, would prefer to go elsewhere for treatment is a body blow.
Only 21 % of all respondents would put their faith in UAE healthcare if they became seriously ill, says the survey, carried out from July 24 to 28 for The National by YouGov, an international research organisation. More than half (53 %) of the 876 people asked said they would prefer to return to their home countries for treatment, while 18 % said they would seek treatment in other countries.
Analysis of responses by national groups suggests that this lack of confidence might be based on more than mere perceptions or prejudices; although a high proportion of Asians (71 per cent), Westerners (57 per cent) and Arab expatriates (42 per cent) opted for leaving for treatment in their home countries. Although this option is not open to Emiratis only 26 % of UAE nationals said they would be happy receiving treatment there. A similar proportion of Arabs (27 %) and Westerners (24 %) expatriates said they would elect to be treated in the UAE for serious illnesses, but only 15 % of Asian expatriates said the same.
Dr Fatma Abdulla of the Dubai School of Government argues that the healthcare sector has only itself to blame for the lack of confidence. She says that internationally, health care has become a consumer industry focusing more on giving patients the best possible personal care, but local hospitals have little concept of this and give patients what doctors and hospitals think they want. Although this attitude may be less unfriendly in the new clinics and hospitals of Dubai, there is a residual worry that the local hospital industry has concentrated so much on shiny new hospitals and equipment, that they have failed to grasp the importance of consumer care.
A high proportion of respondents (45%) said that either their friends or family in the UAE or they themselves (13%) had travelled abroad for medical care, including surgery. The main proportion of respondents who had travelled for treatment were Westerners, 27%, piling more misery on for the country’s medical tourism industry that wants to attract people from Europe and the USA.
Destinations for medical tourism varied, largely according to nationality. India was the most popular, with 57 % of those who had gone abroad for treatment, or whose friends of family had done so. Thailand was the top destination for Emiratis (64 %). For western expatriates, the UK was the top choice for 61 %, while Thailand and the US attracted 17 % each.
In November2008, the Ministry of Health announced that a ratings system for doctors and hospitals would be introduced as part of a drive to make the UAE a destination for medical tourism. The National survey shows a disbelief in both the plan and the logic behind it. Respondents were asked how well equipped they felt the UAE was to tap into the medical tourism market now or in the near future. Less than a third believed it was well equipped to do so, 28 % thought it was not well equipped and 19 % felt it was not at all ready. With prices far higher than Asia, this survey may finally force the UAE to accept that it only has limited medical tourism potential.

The Czech Republic is well known for its dentistry and spas, but it does not fully capitalize on its high quality health care for cosmetic surgery or medical treatment.
Last year, more than 6,000 people went to the Czech Republic for cosmetic surgery, 20% of the total. Patients come from the nearby countries such as Germany, Austria or Slovakia and from the UK. Women use the services of the cosmetic surgery far more often than men, 87 % of the foreign patients are female. This fact also influences the most popular operations chart breast augmentation liposuction and rhinoplasty are on the top. Men are discovering the advantages of artificial body improvements, they prefer liposuction and rhinoplasty.
Except for cosmetic surgery, medical tourists come mostly for dental, orthopaedic or infertility treatments. An average client from abroad spends 3 to 10 days in the Czech Republic, much longer than an average sightseeing tourist. It is rare for visitors to combine their medical stay with sightseeing or post-op spa treatment.
The Association of Czech Travel Agents feels there is a gap in the market that offers new business possibilities for travel agents as well as spas, of offering post-operative relaxation at spas. Czech destinations such as Prague where many go for cosmetic surgery have an advantage over their rivals, but the well-known Czech spa cities could attract more foreign cosmetic surgery clients. The number of foreign patients using Czech spas is growing with one in five spa patients being a foreigner.
Spas in Karlovy Vary mainly see Russians and people from the countries of the former Soviet Union, plus Spaniards, Germans, Chinese and people from Asia. Many of them visit the spas for one-day treatment. In Teplice spa, 30 % of clients are from overseas, with the number of clients from Arab countries growing this year. They mainly use the services of the spa as outpatients. The Arab spa clients who annually make up about two-thirds of all foreign clients of the Teplice spa usually rent flats in the town for a couple of weeks from where they visit spa facilities. They usually come with their whole families and they spend most of their leisure time in the local park. While Arab numbers are up, the number of Germans visiting the Teplice spa has fallen this year. Foreigners make about 15 % of clients of the largest Moravian spa  in Luhacovice. They are mainly from Israel, but also from Austria and other EU countries. The state-run spa Karlova Studanka, Moravia, says Poles are the main visitors, but Germans have also started visiting the spa this year.
The country has 30 spa towns across the country, several hundred natural springs and large deposits of mineral-rich mud. The Czech Republic is known for its high standard of medical care and low costs in comparison to other countries. Highly qualified staff take good care of guests at spa facilities, and in combination with the unique affects of the water and mud, guests can expect top quality procedures.

St. Luke’s Medical Center plans to open its second hospital facility in the Metro Manila right at the heart of the country’s newest business district – Fort Bonifacio Global City, by the end of the year. The opening will now be some time in 2010.The new St. Luke’s Hospital will have two towers: a 14-storey, 600-bed hospital building; and a Medical Arts Building that will house 375 doctors’ offices. The hospital will be built on a 1.6-hectare lot with a gross floor area of 154,000 square meters and will be one of the biggest hospitals in Metro Manila in terms of total floor space. The new St. Luke’s Medical Center at Fort Bonifacio Global City is expected to generate 2,700 new jobs for non-medical staff and will bring in about 1,000 doctors, partly from the original facility in Quezon City.
The 650-bed St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City is the most advanced hospital in the country in terms of equipment and technology, professional expertise, range of services, quality of patient care, medical research, and customer service. It receives patients from around Asia, Micronesia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.
St. Luke’s at the Fort has successfully been registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority as a medical tourism park. It is only the second hospital to do so. PEZA registered medical tourism parks enjoy a host of incentives, including the payment of a special 5-percent tax on gross income, in lieu of all national and local taxes. Additionally, they enjoy four years of income tax holiday on profits solely derived from servicing foreign patients. After the four-year ITH or income tax holiday, the medical tourism parks will just pay a 5-percent gross income tax on income solely derived from servicing foreign patients, in lieu of all national and local taxes. As a PEZA firm, St. Luke’s can also import medical equipment, including spare parts and equipment supplies, duty-free. As a medical tourism centre, it will be allowed to employ foreign nationals subject to existing laws.
The first registered medical tourism park was the St. Frances Cabrini Medical Tourism Park in Batangas City, where the St. Frances Cabrini Medical Center is a clinic for cancer patients and for the Japanese market. In 2007 St. Frances Cabrini Medical Center became the country’s first Medical Tourism Special Economic Zone. This was later confirmed by Philippines Economic Zone Authority (PEZA)- naming St. Cabrini as developer and operator of the country’s first Medical Tourism Park.
Initially conceived to service the health care needs of the more than 8,000 employees of its affiliate company Yazaki-Torres Manufacturing Incorporated and other industrial clientele in the vicinity, the need for a modern hospital and the pace of development of the region created a bigger demand and quickly expanded the client base for the medical centre. St. Frances Cabrini Medical Center is owned by the Torres half of the Yazaki-Torres group. Feliciano Torres, president of Yazaki-Torres Manufacturing Incorporated (YTMI) is the chairman and CEO.

Malaysia has the potential to become a medical tourism hub, says Frost & Sullivan’s Dr Pawel Suwinski: The recent promotion of medical tourism by the government and the Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia is excellent. Health tourism is one of the brightest points in the growth of the healthcare sector in Malaysia.
The latest figures on medical tourism in Malaysia support Suwinski’s claim. The compounded annual growth rate of foreign tourists to Malaysia seeking medical care is 25.3% from 1998 to 2008.Revenue per patient grew from US$92 in 1998 to US$241 in 2008. While most foreign patients came from neighbouring countries with less developed medical infrastructure such as Indonesia, there is a growing market in developed countries.
Simranjit Singh,also of Frost & Sullivan says Cost and relative political stability lends Malaysia a distinct comparative advantage in the field of medical tourism. There is no denying that Malaysia has an edge over Singapore and even Thailand in this respect. The recession had led to rising healthcare costs in the West, making the Asian region a cheaper alternative for medical treatment.
According to a survey carried out by Frost & Sullivan, potential medical tourists are concerned primarily with accredited doctors and nurses, accessibility to hospitals and leisure at their place of stay. Malaysia fared well in all three areas. The report adds that healthcare expenditure in Malaysia is increasingly driven by increased privatisation within the healthcare service provision and upgrading of existing healthcare infrastructure within the public sector. The market for healthcare services has also received positive impetus from growing promotion of health tourism and development activities.
The Malaysian healthcare system is dominated by private hospitals accounting for an average of 62 percent of total number of hospitals annually from 2002-2008.As at the end of 2008; there were 144 public hospitals and 224 private hospitals in Malaysia.The Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC) is being set up within the Health Ministry to promote and develop the country’s health tourism industry. It will report to an advisory committee chaired by the health minister. Members of this council are representatives from the government and the private sector involved in health tourism.
The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) argues that there should be a very clear separation between the public and private sectors when it comes to healthcare because the government is responsible for regulating the private healthcare sector and carrying out enforcement duties.CAP says, There is bound to be a major conflict of interest. How can the ministry regulate and enforce laws when it is, at the same time, involved in promotional activities for this very same industry? There will be the tendency to favour the industry. Seeing the way the top people in the ministry are going all out to publicly support health tourism, it appears that the ministry is letting the public know that its priority is turning more towards business. Government hospitals are still critically understaffed. Key specialists are serving instead in the private sector. Faced with long waiting times, patients sometimes resort to seeking treatment at private healthcare facilities. This is often in spite of the charges at these facilities being something they can ill afford. As patient load and services at private healthcare facilities increase due to aggressive promotion of services, charges for treatment go up. CAP calls on the ministry to halt this alarming trend towards being totally involved in encouraging health tourism. The ministry should remain independent and play its role to regulate the private healthcare sector. There should not be a travel agency housed in the Health Ministry.