Malaysia’s Prodigal Sons to Boost Medical Tourism

Attract Research Experts and Advance International Travel Medical Care

The Malaysian government has announced its intention of starting a program aimed at encouraging its diaspora of research experts to return to the motherland.  Included in the agenda are up-to-date research facilities, government grants, the expansion of the medical tourism industry, and international travel medical care.  Researchers and scientists who return to Malaysia are often disappointed at the lack of these facilities in their homeland.  The government plans to provide these along with health travel, in order to boost medical tourism in Malaysia.

Promoting Research to Further Medical Tourism in Malaysia

Contributions made by returning medical specialists have been significant and have led to the proliferation of health travel packages and increased demand for international travel medical care.  The government, therefore, has decided not only provide them with facilities, but to also do everything within its power to encourage them to stay on. Plans are afoot to modernize infrastructure that will help promote their research and expertise and will also, consequently, advance medical tourism in Malaysia and international travel medical care.

Medical Specialists Advance Health Travel

Since many of these repatriated research scientists are of high caliber and command hefty salaries abroad, they are, in most cases, not satisfied with the prevalent wage structure at local universities back home. Very often, they opt to become contract researchers, dependent on government grants to carry out their research. Around 300 such scientists have already returned to the country and have been conducting research there over the past five years. Of these, about 100 are medical experts who are now employed in private medical institutions. These medical institutions are participants in the health travel schemes and medical tourism packages of Malaysia.

The Private Sector and Medical Tourism

Many of these research scientists have returned to Malaysia because there is now a burgeoning need for them in the private sector, which is a keen promoter of medical tourism and health travel.  These research scientists are, therefore, crucial to the evolution of Malaysia as an important focal center of the medical tourism industry in the region. It is because of their contribution to the Malaysian health care system that tourists now confidently visit medical centers in cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang, as an important part of their health travel. They use Malaysia’s health tourism facilities for simple procedures like medical examinations as well as more complicated surgical procedures.

Source: “High-tech Research Centers to Entice Experts to Return,” The Star, October 31, 2006