An increasing number of medical tourists are travelling to the UAE for fertility treatments, particularly for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), as reported by IVI Middle East Fertility Clinics.

Medical tourists from across the GCC, East and North Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Asia prefer to travel to the UAE for world-class quality treatments, ease of accessibility and competitive affordability offered by the country.

Most fertility clinics in the UAE offer patients the facility to test for overall chromosomal normalcy in embryos, to detect if there are any genetic diseases running in the family. In addition, the UAE also allows couples to opt for the gender of their choice as part of ‘Family Balancing’ also known as ‘Gender Selection’ to achieve a balanced representation of both genders in the family. The US and the UAE are the only two countries where this is legal and is one of the prime reasons attracting medical tourists to the country. 

From the 18th to the 20th century, mostly wealthy patients from developing countries travelled to medical centres in Europe and the US for medical treatment. This trend began to reverse in the late 20th and increased significantly in the 21st century by means of the globalisation of communication and transportation technologies where less wealthy people from developed countries started to travel to developing countries for medical services. Also, estimation of the size of the medical tourism industry provides a wide range, it is somewhat around $100 billion. Despite this notable market size and growth as well as the increasing number of countries promoting and branding themselves as medical tourist destinations or their underlying cities or medical facilities, there is a lack of a domain‐specific and statistically sound measurement. The MTI is the worldwide reference point on the attractiveness of countries as medical tourism destinations, rating and analysing the state of a country as a medical tourism destination, how it is positioned and should be positioned to increase the prosperity of its population.

In addition to the GCC and South Asian countries, IVI Middle East Fertility Clinic also has patients from India, Africa, Saudi, Oman, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bahrain and several other countries in the world. One out of every 10 patients at the clinic is a medical tourist.

“The field of reproductive medicine is a very young field as compared to other fields of medicine. Over the past three decades, we have gained significant scientific knowledge and experience, improving the chances for couples to become parents. Our extensive clinical research has helped translate our knowledge into practice, making us the leaders in our field,” said Prof. Dr Human Fatemi, subspecialist reproductive medicine and reproductive surgery and the medical director, IVI Middle East Fertility Clinic.

To encourage and develop the medical tourism market in the country, IVI Fertility offers patients skype consultation, coordinates the stimulation process in their home country and also arranges for medical visas, hotel accommodation and conveyance. IVI follows stringent regulations and standards benchmarked against the highest standards in the world to offer patients quality healthcare. As a healthcare unit, with an excellent team of over 1,000 doctors, IVI delivers a success rate of over 71 per cent, which is in line with the UAE’s healthcare’s pursuit of providing a seamless end-to-end healthcare experience to healthcare travellers. It has been observed that most medical tourists opt to travel to the UAE for fertility treatments given the shorter travel time, affordable cost of the treatment and high success rates. The global growth of medical and health tourism industry is estimated to grow by 15 to 20 per cent per year, and by 2025, according to estimates by Business Insider, it should amount to over $120 billion. - TradeArabia News Service