The spa and health business is perhaps the fastest growing niche market. Nearly every major hotel has some kind of spa facility. While many are first-rate and world-class, others are not. Hence, in 2004, the Philippines’ first spa association was set up primarily to uphold industry standards and ensure that clients are aware of those places that are genuinely committed to providing high-quality service. At its inception, the SPA Association of the Philippines had members from hotels and resorts, day spas, destination spas, medical spas, spa consultants, training schools and suppliers of equipment and products. Medical tourism, on the other hand, is a term that has risen from the rapid growth of the industry where people from all around the world are traveling to Asian countries such as Thailand and India to obtain medical, dental, and surgical care while at the same time touring, vacationing, and fully experiencing the attractions of the countries that they are visiting. A combination of many factors has led to the recent increase in popularity of medical tourism — exorbitant costs of healthcare in industrialized nations, ease and affordability of international travel, favorable currency exchange rates in the global economy, rapidly improving technology and standards of care in many countries of the world, and most importantly proven safety of healthcare in select foreign nations have all led to the rise of medical tourism. More and more people are traveling abroad as an affordable, enjoyable, and safe alternative to having expensive medical, dental, and surgical procedures done in their home countries. Medical tourists are generally residents of the industrialized nations of the world and primarily come from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Western Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. But more and more, people from many other countries of the world are seeking out places where they can combine vacationing and obtaining their medical care at an affordable cost."A study by the Confederation of Asian Industry and a private consultancy firm has estimated ‘medical tourism’ could be worth at least $ 2 billion by 2012," says Dr. Pierre Clero, Medical director of Clinique Internationale D’ Esthetique based in Paris, France. "Last year, some 1.5 million foreigners visited India alone for treatment, with the number rising by 15 percent every year. The increasing number is forging new definitions for medical tourism in a country, where medical tourists, until now, consisted only of those from third-world countries (in Africa and Southeast Asia) or those visiting the city for traditional Ayurvedic medicine." Dr. Clero is currently in Manila as a consultant for EuroClinics Inc., a Filipino-owned medical consortium that explores the potential growth of health tourism in the Philippines by offering a vast array of elective medical procedures to both foreign and local patients. Adds Dr. Clero, "Currently medical tourists are traveling in large numbers to India, Thailand, the East Indies and South America — places where the quality of healthcare is equal to anywhere else in the world and yet the cost is significantly lower. These regions also offer numerous options for touring, sight-seeing, shopping, exploring, and yes, even lounging on sun drenched beaches.""Although these places are currently the most popular choices for medical tourists, the industry is growing so rapidly that more and more countries and medical centers around the world are beginning to tailor services aimed specifically at medical tourists, and the expectation is that the options for where medical tourists can choose to travel will continue to increase at a rapid pace."With a large pool of highly trained doctors and low treatment prices, the Philippine healthcare sector aims at replicating Thailand and India’s success. "So far, patients who were forced to cancel their scheduled medical visits due to the recent tsunami tragedy are now looking at the Philippines’ shores. Plus, the long awaited opening of the new airport in the last quarter, and under the promising leadership of the Arroyo administration, we can expect the bettering of health tourism prospects," Dr. Clero predicts. A myriad of options exist for medical tourists in the Philippines — from purely elective procedures such as liposuction, breast augmentation, micro-follicular hair grafting, to more serious and life-saving procedures such as joint replacements, bone marrow transplants, and cardiac bypass surgery – foreign nationals and balikbayans can now obtain essentially any type of medical or surgical procedure locally in a safe and effective manner for a fraction of the cost that they would face in their home countries. Clero calls it global connectivity. "There used to be a time gap in terms of medical technology reaching the shores of Manila, but not anymore. Also, with every third medical practitioner in UK or the US known to be of Filipino descent, first-world patients attach a reasonable amount of confidence and comfort in being treated in the Philippines." Clero also peg his medical team’s outlook on health tourism to a series of firsts: Innovative facilities offered by Euro-Clinic such as airport-to-hospital limousine service, concierge facility, Internet access, in-house interpreter services, sight-seeing packages, spa and wellness etc. Press materials distributed overseas and Internet promotion also indicate that patients from the developed world have been impressed by post-operative nursing care and good public relations offered by the group. What are the cost savings for medical tourists?Dr. Clero says the cost savings are enormous. "For example, for the same price as a week long vacation for two in Hawaii, a couple can fly to Manila and include airfare, 5-star hotel accommodations, personal tour guide/concierge, and detoxification and spa treatment for the wife while the husband undergoes a hair grafting technique. For other cases, the average cost of tumescent liposuction in the United States is $25,000. That same operation with comparable rates of success costs less than $5,000 conducted in the finest and most state-of-the-art outpatient clinic here. Large price disparities such as these exist across the board for numerous medical and surgical procedures. And because of favorable currency exchange rates for medical tourists, the costs associated with accommodations, food, shopping, and sight-seeing are similarly very favorable.""Plus, considering India’s questionable sanitary conditions, there is no comparison when it comes to our Philippine clinic set-up," says Dr. Clero, who first came to Manila three years ago and has already invested more than $1 million to help boost the Philippines’ health tourism sector.

Euro-Clinic is located at #219 Nicanor Garcia St., (formerly Reposo), Makati City.

http://www.mb.com.ph/TOUR2005041532742.html#