Malaysia reaches out to GCC health tourists with its ‘halal treatment’

By Arno MaierbruggerGulf Times Correspondent BangkokMalaysia in its aim to boost medical tourism numbers is focusing more than ever on health travellers from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. According to the Malaysian Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC), Malaysia attracted 880,000 medical tourists in 2014 and wants to boost these numbers by 10% in 2015 and eventually cross the 1mn-mark by 2016. More measures will be introduced in the 2016 budget to promote medical tourism as the sector’s contribution to GDP has been given more significance.The MHTC, responsible for promoting the health tourism sector, is now focusing more intensely on “halal health treatments” to entice medical travellers from Muslim countries. It is not just that some hospitals are halal-certified, which means that they serve halal food and have facilities for Muslims, such as prayer rooms – they also provide halal medical treatments which exclude products forbidden under Islamic law, such as those derived from pork. For example, insulin, a widely used product in hospitals, is mostly porcine-based, but in a halal environment replaced by bovine products. This is also the case with gelatin-based products and sutures. Pharmacies in halal hospitals inform patients of products that are free of gelatin and porcine and other halal drugs. Moreover, a pharmaceutical company in Malaysia, Halal Industry Development Corp, is currently developing the world’s first halal vaccines for meningitis and hepatitis to be ready for use in 2017.Another sales proposition for Malaysia to attract more medical tourists is affordability of medical treatment in the country, namely in comparison to its main regional competitors Thailand and Singapore. According MHTC CEO Sherene Azura Azli, medical treatment in the region’s most popular health tourism destination, Thailand has become more expensive in the past, and second-ranked Singapore is already struggling to accommodate the large number of health tourists it receives. With regards to treatment costs, as of 2014, a heart bypass, for example, costs between $9,300 and $16,000 in Malaysia compared to $15,000 and more in Thailand or $20,000 and more in Singapore. In the US, such a procedure would have a price tag of about $144,000.In the Middle East, Malaysia is setting a focus on Oman to lure more health tourists into its hospitals. Oman is one of three countries – the others being Libya and Kazakhstan – with which Malaysia has government-to-government agreements to send patients over. Under these agreements, the government pays for health care services for its citizens in Malaysia, which is a win-win-situation for both Malaysian hospitals and foreign patients.Large hospital groups in Malaysia, namely KPJ, IHH Healthcare and Ramsay Sime Darby Health Care Group all have agents in Oman through which health travel arrangement are made. According to the MHTC, there is about 50% growth per year in Omani patients traveling to Malaysia, and within the GCC, Oman is currently ranked third as a source country for health tourists to Malaysia behind Saudi Arabia and the UAE.MHTC is also working with Oman’s Ministry of Health to promote Malaysia as a destination for medical referrals as Malaysia in the GCC not only competes with Thailand and Singapore, but also with India and – on the upper end of the price tag – European countries such as Germany.In any case, Malaysia’s big hospital groups are all increasing their bed allocation and topping up their services for foreign patients in expectation of more health travellers coming in the future. KPJ Healthcare, whose revenue from foreign health tourists was just around 4% in 2013, aims to increase this share to 25% by 2020. For the entire sector, the revenue growth rate from medical tourism had exceeded the target in the country’s development plant, the 10th Malaysia Plan (2011-2015), by 10% every year, and for the 11th Malaysia Plan period (2016-2020), the income is expected to grow 15% annually, generating revenue of more than $450mn, according to Malaysia’s Tourism and Culture Ministry undersecretary Alan Abdul Rahim.