According To Iran News, North Korea plans to branch out into medical tourism next year, offering foreign visitors, most likely from China, treatments including cataract surgery, dental implants and therapy for tumors.

The ruling party’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported Friday the recent launch of the “Treatment Tourism Exchange Corporation”, aimed at capitalising on the “rising demand for tourism, including medical care, in line with an international trend”.

North Korea to Launch Medical Tourism

The new state entity will operate health clinics near hot springs, whose mineral waters, it said, can help treat neuralgia, arthritis, and heart and skin ailments, Reuters reported.

Private tourism is one of the few remaining areas of business not blocked by sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programmes.

As many as 350,000 Chinese tourists have visited North Korea this year, potentially netting the authorities up to $175 million, according to some analysts.

Last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a hot spring resort nearing completion in the central alpine town of Yangdok, one of major construction projects at the heart of his drive to build a “self-reliant” economy.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean studies in Seoul, described the medical tourism campaign as propaganda designed at showing progress, while adding that it could appeal to some Chinese tourists.

“North Korea primarily offers natural tourist attractions and appears to believe they can be a money maker if combined with elements of oriental medicine, which many Chinese people like,” he said.

A recent report by a government-affiliated health institute in neighbouring South Korea said North Korea was struggling to provide basic health care.

“The reality is that primary-care providers – local clinics and doctors – are so short of basic equipment and supplies that they barely provide what may be called medical consultation,” it concluded in the report on the state of the health sector in the North.

“The situation is not much better for secondary-care providers including state hospitals in cities and counties,” it said.

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 Some 12 hospitals in the northwestern city of Mashhad, Khorasan province, have so far gained the license to admit international patients, a senior official said.

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 Iran is set to host two international conferences on medical tourism in 2019, a senior official at the Ministry of Health and Medical Education said.

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“The Ministry of Health supports [such a] medical tourism sector that is directed by the private sector based on competitive prices,” Hassan Qazizadeh-Hashemi said in an address to a medical tourism conference held here on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, the country is far less developed in the field of medical tourism, and improving such services will be carried out by the private sector assistance,” IRNA quoted Qazizadeh-Hashemi say saying.

“The Ministry of Health welcomes prospects of attracting foreign patients with competitive tariffs.”

“If we want health tourism to flourish, we need to trigger the private sector to become more vigorous in this regard while competition must be in terms of service quality and cheaper prices. There are many patients who care about the costs of medical services,” the official explained.

Referring to health and medical tourism as a highly competitive market, the minister said “If medical tourism services are offered with adequate quality and wallet-friendly prices, the country would attract greater number of health tourists not only from neighboring countries but also from all over the globe including the U.S., Europe, India and China.”

Half-price visas

Tourists who travel to Iran to receive medical services will be charged half the regular visa issuance fee, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Consular Affairs Hassan Qashqavi said on the sidelines of the conference.

“Medical tourists and their companions can also travel back and forth to Iran during the course of treatment,” Qashqavi added.

Last year, some 30,000 visas were issued for medical tourists who travelled to Iran, the deputy minister said. “Owing to the skilled physicians, and properly equipped hospitals the Islamic Republic of Iran can become a regional hub for medical tourism.”

High potential for medical tourism development 

Back in August, Ali Rabiei, minister of cooperatives, labor and social welfare, said the country has a potential to earn $7 billion in revenues through attracting one million health tourists per annum.

Rabiei also pointed to lack of integrated management and proper advertisement as factors that have hampered medical and health tourism sectors in the country despite what he described as high quality of services and low prices.

The Ministry of Health registered some 105,000 inbound patients over the past Iranian calendar year (March 2016-March 2017), a majority of them came from neighboring countries including Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Persian Gulf littoral states.

According to a report published by Allied Market Research, titled, “Medical Tourism Market by Treatment Type: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2023,” the global medical tourism market was valued at $61,172 million in 2016, and is projected to reach $165,345 million by 2023

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