Malaysia reaches out to GCC health tourists with halal treatment

 18-Nov-15, Gulf Times

Malaysia in its aim to boost medical tourism numbers is focusing more than ever on health travellers from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. According to the Malaysian Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC), Malaysia attracted 880,000 medical tourists in 2014 and wants to boost these numbers by 10% in 2015 and eventually cross the 1mn-mark by 2016.

More measures will be introduced in the 2016 budget to promote medical tourism as the sector’s contribution to GDP has been given more significance.

Image: Global Health and Travel

The MHTC, responsible for promoting the health tourism sector, is now focusing more intensely on “halal health treatments” to entice medical travellers from Muslim countries. It is not just that some hospitals are halal-certified, which means that they serve halal food and have facilities for Muslims, such as prayer rooms – they also provide halal medical treatments which exclude products forbidden under Islamic law, such as those derived from pork.

For example, insulin, a widely used product in hospitals, is mostly porcine-based, but in a halal environment replaced by bovine products. This is also the case with gelatin-based products and sutures. Pharmacies in halal hospitals inform patients of products that are free of gelatin and pork. 

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