Cebu promoting medical tourism

The Cebu Health and Wellness Council hopes that a revitalised Spa and Wellness Association of Cebu will promote Cebu.

The Cebu Health and Wellness Council (CHWC) hopes that a revitalised Spa and Wellness Association of Cebu (SWAC) will promote Cebu as a medical, dental, and health tourism destination.

SWAC has been inactive for some time now, reportedly due to internal problems. The organization represented day spas, resort spas, fitness gym, wellness clinics, yoga studios, and vegetarian cafes. There are more than 20 hotel-based spas and more than 200 wellness centres in Cebu offering services including body scrubs, facials, healing and body massage.

Clarissa Jane Pe of CHWC says, “We need the SWAC back as their active involvement would create a stronger alliance to help sell Cebu as a prime destination for tourists seeking health and wellness treatments and recuperation.

Pe claims that Cebu accounts for 20% of the country’s tourists and the target for Cebu medical tourism would be 10% of them, with a final target of a million medical tourists for the whole country.

The European Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines is helping Cebu revive the retirement and healthcare coalition so that EU travellers can be targeted.

The Philippines claims between 80,000 to 250,000 medical tourists annually but nobody has any real figures and exaggerated past claims backfired as organisations cut back on co-operation, marketing and advertising.  CHWC accepts that decades of under-investment have resulted in large deficiencies in both medical facilities and services. Other problems are the continued migration of healthcare workers to the USA, European Union and the Middle East, and lack of direct connectivity between the Philippines and other countries that makes travel to the country expensive.

CHWC claims that the government and various organizations are slowly addressing these issues– although government financial and other support his now mostly non-existent. Cosmetic surgery, wellness treatments, and dentistry are area that the Philippines offers.

New openings in Cebu include Maayo Hospital in Mandaue City, planned to open in June 2017, Manila-based Ace Medical, Ayala Group’s QualiMed, and Medical City, a retirement project.

Elsewhere in the country Lanang Premiere Doctors Hospital, Inc. (LPDHI), has broken ground in Davao Park In Mindanou, and is looking to attract medical tourists from the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines-East ASEAN region. LPHDI admits that it will take three to five years to get its medical tourism programme fully running with the necessary international accreditation and transport links.