The Star
Saturday November 8, 2008

Health and medical tourism will boost growth: Datuk Liow Tiong Lai

BEIJING: Malaysia is tapping into the health and medical tourism as part of the latest measures announced by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to avert recession.

Health Minister Datuk Liow Tiong Lai said the increasing number of services and medical professionals and wider range of facilities would enable the country to ride the health and medical tourism boom.

The increase in revenue from health and medical tourism would also boost economic growth and help the country ride out the global economic crisis, he added.

“In the past, there was a lot of opposition to health tourism due to shortage of doctors as one major problem,” he said.

It is estimated that the medical tourism in Asia will be worth US$4bil (RM14.2bil) by 2012 and Malaysia, as one of the top destinations for medical tourists from around the world, expects to earn up to US$590mil (RM2.1bil) within five years, according to earlier reports.

“With the cooperation of the Tourism Ministry, the Health Ministry is also looking beyond health tourism which includes wellness programmes like spa, yoga and traditional medicine,” he said at a dinner he hosted for Malaysian students at the Malaysian Embassy here yesterday.

Liow also said that Malaysia, due to its multiracial society, could offer a wide range of traditional medicine such as acupuncture (Chinese), Ayurdeva (Indian) and Malay traditional massage.

He added that Malaysia currently recognised traditional medicine degrees from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine.

Two more universities to be recognised later are Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Guangzhou Uni­versity of Chinese Medicine, he said, adding that graduates from these universities need not sit for any local examination before working at government hospitals.

He said Malaysian universities would be able to offer 12 Traditional and Complementary Medicine courses in future when the Traditional and Comple­mentary Medicine (TCM) Bill is passed next year.

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