Around 60,000 Vietnamese people spent around $2 billion on their overseas healthcare last year, and the figures are forecast to continue increasing in the near future, experts have said. The experts attributed the situation to Vietnamese people’s rising demand and foreign hospital’s more effective promotion programs than those in Vietnam, along with complicated administrative procedures and overload at local hospitals. The most popular regional destination for Vietnamese patients in 2018 was Singapore with 30,000 arrivals. Notably, most hospitals in Singapore have opened representative offices in three biggest cities in Vietnam namely Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam is always one of the top ten countries with the highest number of patients in Singapore. Thailand followed with 17,000 Vietnamese patients in 2018, and Malaysia with 14,000 arrivals. Vietnam has become one of the five major markets for Malaysia’s tourism-medical sector, besides Indonesia, India, China, and Myanmar. (Tien Phong, Tien Phong, CafeF)
