Pakistan sees potential and problems in medical tourism

Pakistan?s Ministry of Tourism  has finally admitted that the country?s travel and hospitality sectors face an acute drop in business due to the combined adverse effects of terrorism, foreign governments advising their people of the risks of travelling and what the country regards as hostile media coverage all around the world. Looking to find other ways to keep the hotel and tourism industries afloat, officials have suddenly discovered medical tourism.

But there are a few snags. Few local hotels, airlines or tour operators understand medical tourism, and lack knowledge of the hair transplant, open-heart surgery, dental surgery and cosmetic surgery sectors. The ministry puts this omission down to lack of information and motivation, so plans a national conference on how to turn Pakistan into the best destination in the region for quality medical treatment at low cost.

The conference will be organized by the Tourism Ministry, Ministry of Health and Pakistan Medical Association. The invitees will be travel agents, tour operators, hoteliers, representatives of airlines, medical and tourism/travel associations and hospitals, doctors, marketing professionals, and relevant government officials. The Ministry of Tourism wants to help improve cooperation and coordination between local tourism and health sectors and begin the promotion of medical tourism in the country, which after the curtailment of the organ tourism trade three years ago, has dwindled to almost nothing. The ministry hopes that by working together for the promotion of medical tourism, health and tourism sectors will support each other and reap the benefits of an improvement in the economy.

The tourism ministry wants travel agencies, hotels, resorts, hospitals, spas, airlines and other related businesses to fully understand their role in this market and how they can tap into these so far untouched opportunities. While Pakistan is definitely low cost, it has problems on quality as even the government admits a lack of quality health care and shortage of specialised hospitals of international standards in the country. Tourism officials are pushing the government, financial institutions and private groups to invest in healthcare and medical tourism by upgrading basic amenities and hospital infrastructure, building international quality hospitals, co-ordination between health care and tourism sectors, and the creation of a resource pool of skilled manpower. The industry accepts that standardisation of services and accreditation of hospitals are both necessary before the country can attract large numbers of foreigners for medical treatment. Pakistan has a number of modern hospitals in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore while some doctors and surgeons in Pakistani hospitals are often foreign qualified. A number of patients from neighbouring Afghanistan and Iran do travel to Pakistan for treatment, but considering the problems with terrorism in both countries with links to groups in Pakistan, that these are the main existing markets may not be the best thing to promote.

With the problems and solutions proposed, it is obvious that developing medical tourism will take several years, and is far from the quick fix to current economic and tourism problems that tourism officials originally hoped. Apart from a small handful of hospitals and clinics and entrepreneurs, business in the country has shown little enthusiasm for medical tourism. Until the major political and terrorism problems are solved, the debate is probably only academic, as Europeans will not visit in numbers while these problems remain.

Sourced=imtj