While Burma struggles to cope with a surge in foreign tourists,
increasing numbers of Burmese are flying out of the country to spend
millions of dollars on improving their health.
The phenomenon of tens of thousands of wealthy Burmese seeking
medical treatment abroad was spotlighted by a travel trade magazine
which last week warned of the inadequacy of Burma’s health care for
tourists.
“You don’t want to get sick in Mandalay or any other city in
[Burma],” TTR Weekly advised in a report on the ease of flying now to
Burma’s second-largest city from Thailand.
“Medical tourism is booming in Mandalay in an outbound direction. It
all goes by airlines to Bangkok where the lucky patients check in the
city’s top private hospitals and pay a premium to regain their health,”
said the report.
“The rest of Mandalay’s population is in a pickle public health-wise
and so are tourists if they haven’t bothered with travel insurance.”
Burma’s poor hospital and medical infrastructure may present problems
for foreigners visiting the country, but it is boosting business
enormously for Bangkok’s booming private hospitals industry by netting
tens of millions of dollars a year from wealthy Burmese seeking
treatment they cannot get at home.
Bangkok Hospital Group (BHG) says it handled 22,200 patients from
Burma in 2012. This year to date, the number of Burmese passing through
BHG’s hospitals is up more than 40 percent, said the company’s
international marketing director Ralf Krewer.
And that perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising: BHG has 13 promotional
offices across Burma to cater to the surging health care demand.
“Unfortunately, at the moment [Burma’s] health care system is not
that developed as, for example, in Thailand, so for us [Burma] was a
very obvious target to enter at a very early point and we were very
successful in doing so,” Krewer said.
“Burma is now [our] biggest foreign market worldwide.”
Burmese are going to Thailand for both preventative health care
treatment and for surgery to treat existing problems. They are seeking
treatment for cancer, heart ailments and orthopedic problems such as hip
replacements.
At BHG, the average payment by Burmese for a major surgery is around
330,000 baht (US$10,600), and for general health check-ups 24,000 baht.
The demand for health services from Burmese able to travel abroad and
the rapid growth in tourism to Burma is a double incentive for
Thailand-based private hospital companies to consider moving their
businesses into the country.
BHG rival Bumrungrad Hospital International (BHI) has an agreement
with Serge Pun and Associates to manage a new private hospital built on
the Pun Hlaing Golf Estate in Rangoon’s Hlaing Thar Yar Township.
The Pun Hlaing Hospital is small, however, with accommodation for
just over 100 patients—compared with 550 at Bumrungrad Hospital in
Bangkok, which is the biggest private hospital in Southeast Asia.
Another Bangkok-based hospital group, Dusit Medical Services, has
said it is planning to acquire land in Burma to build a new hospital,
but is waiting for the clarification of several investment laws.
The surge in tourism into Burma promises to provide a new long-term
source of revenue, as it does in Thailand. Hotels and Tourism Minister
Htay Aung said last week that 10,000 rooms of extra accommodation will
be ready by the end of this year, but admitted there was a “need to
develop infrastructure to support the tourist increase.”
That infrastructure includes roads, transport, modern financial services such as ATMs—and adequate health facilities.
Burma attracted more than 1 million foreign visitors in 2012 and is
aiming to triple that number by 2015, putting an even bigger strain on
services.
A foreign visitor can pay more than $200 daily staying in some of
Burma’s fancy new hotel resorts—like the $217-per-night Rupar Mandalar
Resort in Mandalay.
But $1,000 wouldn’t secure a decent bed in a local hospital attended
by a skilled medical team. In the meantime, foreign tourists are being
advised by some tour operators to take out comprehensive health
insurance good enough to pay for them to be flown out of the country to
Thailand if need be.
There are plans to modernize the run-down, 1,500-bed Rangoon General
Hospital. It will cost tens of millions of dollars to renovate it and
add 21st century facilities. The hospital, built by the British in the
19th century, is not generally open to foreigners.
One Bangkok company has begun an air ambulance service.
“We are talking medical evacuation here, not often a topic on the
lips of tourism experts,” said TTR Weekly’s Don Ross, who flew to
Mandalay last week to test facilities.
“I am told VIP Jets, owned by Asian Trails chairman Luzi Matzig, is
heavily booked doing just that from frontier tourism spots of the Mekong
region to Bangkok’s posh hospitals.”
source: The Irrawaddy
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