Four specialities lead Dubai medical tourism

Dubai: Four medical specialities have had a very successful response in medical tourism, bringing in a large number of medical tourists in the last two years. Dr Laila Al Marzouqi, director of Dubai Medical Tourism Project, told Gulf News on the sidelines of Arab Health 2017.

“In 2015-2016, Orthopaedics, Dental, Ophthalmology and In Vitro Fertilisation attracted a lot of interests from health tourists. More than Dh1 billion was made in medical tourism revenues. The annual revenue from medical tourism is slated to increase by 13 per cent every year for the next five years,” she said.

Dubai Health Authority (DHA) statistics show that in 2015 alone, the authority’s medical tourism office recorded the influx of 630,831 medical tourists (including domestic and international patients). Of them, international tourists numbered 298,359, accounting for 46 per cent of the total traffic.

Figures from all 26 hospitals in Dubai — including both private sector and public sector facilities — show that the top three specialities were Orthopaedics that accounted for 34 per cent, followed by Dental which attracted 29 per cent and Ophthalmology that attracted 18 per cent.

Dr Al Marzoqui added that her department was currently computing current data. “We have a DXH app which is available on both Android platform and App Store that allows medical tourists from any part of the world to select medical packages and take prior appointments from our list of 42 health-care providers who are part of the DXH group.”

For more information, tourists can log on to www.dxh.ae

Top three performing disciplines

Orthopaedics (Treatments included sports medicine, hip replacements, spinal injuries and knee replacements)

Asia: 57%

Arab and GCC: 21%

European countries: 12%

African countries: 7%

Dental (Crowns, implants, tooth whitening, dentures and veneers)

Asia: 63%

Arab and GCC: 20%

Africa: 8%

Europe: 7%

Ophthalmology (Vision correction, corneal graft, surgical treatment of glaucoma and strabismus)

Asia: 48%

Middle East: 31%

Europe: 12%

Africa: 6%