THE MINISTRY of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports has established a Medical Tourism Coordination Committee set to collaborate with hospitals, the relevant authorities and also the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC).
This is in view of the expanding medical tourism sector, which has also been contributing to Sarawak’s economy, says minister Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah.
“In 2017, Sarawak recorded 44,700 foreign patients who came to Sarawak to seek medical treatments, and brought in receipts of RM60.7 million.
“From January to September this year, medical visitors’ arrivals recorded 33,400 and generated a total of RM42.4 million (in) receipts,” he said, citing statistics obtained from MHTC, during the DUN sitting yesterday.
Abdul Karim, who is Asajaya assemblyman, told the august House that the majority of medical visitors were from Jakarta and Pontianak, Indonesia.
He also said medical tourism had been offering lucrative opportunities to local private hospitals and medical professionals and at the same time, it had been benefitting the tourism industry.
“Due to the high currency exchange of Singapore dollar, most patients from Indonesia prefer to come to Sarawak.”
Abdul Karim said in order to boost Sarawak’s medical tourism sector, the MHTC would roll out eVisa in the first quarter of next year to facilitate the entry of medical visitors.
On another matter, he said his ministry is working together with Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) to redevelop its tourism web portal and applications, in addition to developing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) contents of Sarawak’s tourism hotspots – starting with Old Kuching Heritage.
“This has been made possible with an allocation of RM9.62 million given by Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA).
“The two-year project, with the first roll-out to be completed in early 2019, would boost our ‘Visit Sarawak’ campaign,” said Abdul Karim. -TheBorneoPost
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