Hadassah head calls for medical tourism to be 'national
priority"
Treatment of foreigners could bring in $100 m.
By JUDY SIEGEL
The Jerusalem Post
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Medical
tourism the treatment of foreigners in Israeli medical
institutions can
be more than tripled within five years to bring in $100 million annually, said Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director-general of the Hadassah MedicalOrganization on Monday. Mor-Yosef, whose two university medical centers inJerusalem treat quite a few foreign patients, said that medical tourism mustbecome a ³national target² to raise income that can be used to supply betterhealth care and disease prevention to those who cannot affordit.
Mor-Yosef was speaking at the opening of the first-ever IsraelMedical Convention held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, organized by the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) with help from theIsrael Medical Association and the Ha¹ir chain of local weeklies. Theorganizers, who offered nearly eight hours of lectures and panel discussionsby leading physicians and others at no charge to the more than 600participants (about half of them medical professionals and the rest from thegeneral public,said they hope to make it an annual event to bring theunderstanding of
medicine closer to the citizenry.
He called on theHealth Ministry and the Treasury to finance a marketing campaign abroad topromote medical tourism. The HMO director-general told the participants, whoincluded Health Minister Ya¹acov Ben-Yizri and Jerusalem Mayor UriLupolianski, that a growing number of countries have set a goal of increasingmedical tourism to raise extra income. These include Poland, France, Turkey, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South AfricaIndia, Thailand andMalaysia. But although Israel offers world-class medicine, he continued, medical tourism today constitutes less than one percent of Israel¹s tourismincome, with only 10,000 foreign patients spending $30 million a year ontreatments, mostly in 10 medical institutions. Local hospitals’ hotelservices are not the best, but they are
improving.
Unlike many ofthese countries, in Israel, the local population receive the same high levelof care as the foreign tourists who come here specially to undergo operationsand other treatments. Mor-Yosef said Israel, with its high level oftechnology and medical knowhow, can use the additional income from treatingforeigners to reduce inequality in health care. Poverty, he says, kills, asthose with low income suffer more from chronic diseases and observelifestyles that are deleterious to health.
A full report on the
convention will appear on Sunday¹s Health Page.
Judy
Siegel-Itzkovich
Health and Science Reporter and Software Reviewer
The
Jerusalem Post
Source:
www.hadassah.org 
