Singapore Hospitals Target More Brunei Patients
By Azlan Othman in Singapore

Singapore - Bruneian patients are among those from the region that will be lured to Singapore hospitals as the city-state has launched a project that targets one million foreign patients a year.

Bruneians, Indonesians and Malaysians constituted the large majority of patients who came to Singapore for treatment ten years ago.

“Singapore was the undisputed medical hub for this region a decade ago. Nationals from these three countries came here for treatment in large numbers. Today, many foreign patients are still coming here, but competition from the region has increased and foreign patients now have choices,” said Mr Khaw Boon Wan, Singapore’s Acting Minister for Health, at the recent launch of ‘SingaporeMedicine’.

He said, Singapore attracted more than 200,000 foreign patients who came for medical services last year. However Mr. Khaw said Singapore is targeting to serve one million foreign patients annually by 2012, five times the current number.

Though statistics are not available, most of the Bruneian patients who seek medical treatment in Singapore are complex cases and are sponsored by the government.

‘SingaporeMedicine’ is a multi-agency initiative to develop Singapore into a medical hub. The country’s Economic Development Board, the Singapore Tourism Board and International Enterprise Singapore are joining hands to go after the billions of dollars spent annually by Asia’s fast growing middle-class on healthcare.

Dr. Prem Kumar Nair, General Manager for Corporate Affairs of Raffles Hospital, said the hospital is hoping to enter into some sort of agreements with the Brunei government authorities to attract Brunei patients to the hospital.

Citing the fact that a number of expatriates, non-permanent residents and those from the private sector including Brunei Shell are already seeking medical treatment in Raffles hospital, Dr. Prem said that they are now studying the market in Brunei.

Raffles Hospital, which attracts some 30 per cent foreign patients annually, was in the limelight recently and attracted world attention when it carried out a complex surgery to separate adult Iranian twins in vain. However the hospital successfully separated a pair of four-month-old Korean twins joined at the lower back after a five-hour operation in July this year.

Meanwhile Thomson Medical Centre’s (TMC) Director for Corporate Development, May Wong, said Thomson Fertility Centre has established successfully a joint management group with doctors from Brunei.

Asked on possible joint venture with Brunei, TMC Group Executive, Allan Yeo Hwee Tiong, said they love to do it but the population in Brunei is small. However he is hoping to create a synergy with the Brunei hospitals especially in the field of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G).

Mount Elizabeth Hospital, located close to the Orchard Road, is not a stranger to the Bruneian patients, as many of them undergo treatments there, thanks to the Brunei government. They too receive many patients for O&G treatments.

Parkway Group Healthcare owns three leading private hospitals in Singapore namely Mt. Elizabeth, Gleneagles and East Shore.

Gleneagles JPMC Cardiac Centre in Brunei, with 39 beds, has begun operations from April 2003 in phases.

Meanwhile, Acting Assistant Director of Health Care Service of Singapore Tourism Board, Addisson Goh, said they will fly to Brunei later this year to survey the potential to lure private sector employees to undergo medical treatment in Singapore.

According to World Health Organisation’s (WHO) worldwide report in 2000, Singapore’s health system is the best in Asia. Singapore ranked 6th in the world, ahead of Japan (10) and the US (37).

Singapore’s track record includes handling world’s first successful cord blood transplant from an unrelated donor on a patient with Thalassaemia Major, first in the world to harvest stem cells, grow them in a laboratory for use in eye treatment, successful separation of a pair of Siamese twins joined at the head after a 90-hour operation in 2001 and a successful separation of a pair of four-month-old Korean twins joined at the lower back after a five-hour operation in July this year. -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

Brudirect.com News