United Arab Emirates as a Global Medical Tourism Destination

Author(s):  
Prof. Umendra Narayan Shukla ◽  
Sharad Kumar Kulshreshtha

UAE is also known as the fastest-growing medical tourism hub due to its most advanced medical technology, affordable treatments cost, and highly specialized doctors with world-class healthcare services. In this context, the Dubai Health Experience (DXH) is developed by Dubai Health Authority as a brand name for global healthcare and medical tourism, which aims to build up Dubai as a medical tourism hub. Dubai Health Experience (DXH) the United Arab Emirates is also widening its opportunity for the medical tourism market in the Gulf Cooperation Council is a political and economic alliance of six countries in the Arabian Peninsula where UAE is itself member country. In this continuation, Dubai Tourism Strategy 2020 is also a strategic roadmap with the target of attracting 20 million visitors per year by 2020. This chapter will reveal the emerging medical tourism and healthcare trends, healthcare policy of UAE, investment in healthcare and medical tourism, government initiatives, public-private partnership, and key initiatives to achieving sustainable development goals.

Author(s):  
Fahad M Al-Anezi

Abstract Background Electronic health (e-health) approaches such as telemedicine, mobile health, virtual healthcare and electronic health records are considered to be effective in increasing access to healthcare services, reducing operational costs and improving the quality of healthcare services during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, a pandemic resulting from the spread of a novel coronavirus discovered in December 2019. In this context, the aim of this study was to identify the most important factors influencing decision making on the implementation of e-health in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), which are in the process of digitizing healthcare services. Methods This study reviewed the literature to identify the important factors influencing decision making on e-health. In addition, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted in order to identify the most important criteria to be considered in decision making on e-health. The survey link was forwarded to 978 healthcare practitioners and 42 experts (purposive sampling), from which a final sample of 892 (864 practitioners and 28 experts) was achieved, reflecting a response rate of 87.45%. Results Of the 44 factors identified under seven themes (strategic, quality, management, technology, function characteristics, economic, sociocultural and demographic factors), 22 factors were identified to be the most important criteria. Conclusions Findings from this study suggest that decision making in relation to e-health is a complex process that requires consideration of various factors. It was also found that attention should be paid to sociocultural and demographic factors, which may need to be considered in increasing healthcare access during the COVID-19 outbreak.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Srairi

The paper develops a framework to explore the risk disclosure practices of 29 Islamic banks operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries over the period of 2013-2016 and examines the potential factors which might be affecting risk disclosure. To analyze the level of risk disclosure, the paper develops a composite index by using the content analysis technique. We also employ OLS technique to examine factors affecting Islamic banks’ risk disclosure. The results indicate a very high difference in risk disclosure between countries. Only two countries, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have a higher level of risk disclosure. The findings also suggest that reporting on some risk disclosure types especially displaced commercial risk and rate of return risk is very low. The regression results show that Islamic banks with a stronger set of corporate governance mechanisms and an active Shariah board appear to disclose more risk information. Other factors that influence risk disclosure practices of Islamic banks are bank size, leverage, cross-border listings and the level of political and civil regression. The study recommends that Islamic banks have to revise their communication strategies and provide more risk information related to rate of return risk and display commercial risk. In addition, GCC regulators should establish risk disclosure regulations which have to become mandatory for all Islamic banks. To the best of our knowledge, the paper provides the first analysis related to the determinants of corporate risk disclosures of Islamic banks in the Arab Gulf region.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (Special) ◽  

Dubai Health Authority (DHA) is the entity regulating the healthcare sector in the Emirate of Dubai, ensuring high quality and safe healthcare services delivery to the population. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on the 11th of March 2020, indicating to the world that further infection spread is very likely, and alerting countries that they should be ready for possible widespread community transmission. The first case of COVID-19 in the United Arab Emirates was confirmed on 29th of January 2020; since then, the number of cases has continued to grow exponentially. As of 8th of July 2020 (end of the day), 53,045 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed with a death toll of 327 cases. The UAE has conducted over 3,720,000 COVID-19 tests among UAE citizens and residents over the past four months, in line with the government’s plans to strengthen virus screening to contain the spread of COVID-19. There were vital UAE policies, laws, regulations, and decrees that have been announced for immediate implementation to limit the spread of COVID- 19, to prevent panic and to ensure the overall food, nutrition, and well-being are provided. The UAE is amongst the World’s Top 10 for COVID-19 Treatment Efficiency and in the World’s Top 20 for the implementation of COVID-19 Safety measures. The UAE’s mission is to work towards resuming life after COVID-19 and enter into the recovery phases. This policy research paper will discuss the Dubai Health Authority’s rapid response initiatives towards combating the control and spread of COVID-19 and future policy implications and recommendations. The underlying factors and policy options will be discussed in terms of governance, finance, and delivery.


Author(s):  
Ajay Kumar Dogra ◽  
Pooja Dogra

The health tourism Industry is witnessing a sudden paradigm shift in last five years. India has become a home of traditional medicine that has been practiced for several thousand years as a part of manav dharma to give relief to the needy and mostly free of cost. With modern diagnostic and treatment facilities, experienced surgeons, one of the largest pharmaceutical industries in world, and a tradition of caring, India provides world class surgical and healthcare facilities, with comparable success rates and prompt service levels. The potential of medical tourism is such that it can even surpass the revenue earned from IT sector. Recognizing the pivotal contribution of medical tourism to the economic development, the Indian Government has initiated numerous measures to promote this vary young industry to attract international tourism. This has motivated to identify recent trends and opportunities in India for the medical and healthcare tourism, and to explore the critical factors which can lead to success of initiatives taken by ministry of tourism for the development of medical tourism in India. Finally paper suggests measures to enhance medical tourism in the country.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Sarah G. Alzahrani ◽  
Lauren Copeland

Understanding differences among consumers across varying cultures is of great importance to the success of international retailers. Ignoring the influence of culture and centralized marketing has led to a decline in profits for some international companies. Studying the culture of Middle East countries, particularly the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCCC), Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman, is essential before marketing in these countries. Additionally, the GCCC is one of the top 10 luxury markets in the world. Hofstede model of national culture is crucial for GCCC due to the fact culture norms regarding dress and appearance are nationally adopted. A sample of 170 participants from the GCCC was collected using an online questionnaire of 45 items measuring national culture dimensions and need for uniqueness when shopping for luxury goods. It was found that power distance in all GCCC countries was a significant predictor of having a need for uniqueness, as well as indulgence. Power distance had a positive relationship with the need for uniqueness while indulgence had a negative relationship with the need for uniqueness. For other dimensions, findings indicated that long term vs short term orientation, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism were not significant predictors leading to uniqueness. Additionally, the important construct for uniqueness among GCCC consumers is unpopular choice followed by avoiding similarity. Creative choice is less important among the three constructs of uniqueness for GCCC participants. 


Author(s):  
Ali Mustafa Qamar ◽  
Rehan Ullah Khan ◽  
Suliman Alsuhibany

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by World Health Organization in March 2020. Since then, it has attracted the enormous attention of researchers from around the world. The world has gone through previous instances of corona-viruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. Nevertheless, none was of these were of this serious nature as COVID-19. In this research, we carry out a bibliometric analysis of coronavirus research using the Scopus database. However, we restricted ourselves to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The analysis was performed using Biblioshiny software. We analyzed 4288 articles written by 24226 researchers from 1994 till 2021, published in 1429 sources. The number of authors per publication is 5.65. A bulk of the research (more than 68%) appeared in the form of articles. More than 43% of the publications appeared in 2020 and more than 44% in 2021. Saudi Arabia appears the most-cited country, followed by Qatar. Journal of Infection and Public Health published the most number of papers, whereas New England Journal of Medicine is the most-cited one. Memish, Z.A. wrote the maximum number of papers. The top source, according to the H-index, is the Journal of Virology. Furthermore, the two most prolific universities are King Saud University and King Abdulaziz University, both from Saudi Arabia. The research uncovered deep learning as a niche theme used in recent publications. The research landscape continues to alter as the pandemic keeps on evolving.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Md. Nazmul Haque ◽  
Mustafa Saroar ◽  
Md. Abdul Fattah ◽  
Syed Riad Morshed

PurposePublic-Private Partnership (PPP) is a common practice in both the public and private sectors. PPP has been an important instrument to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the national level. However, the role of PPP at the subnational level is often scarcely studied. Using Khulna city of Bangladesh as a case, this paper aims to assess the role of PPP projects in the attainment of SDGs.Design/methodology/approachThe research was conducted in the Central Business District (CBD) of Khulna, on a total of 4.6 kilometers stretches of road medians in the CBD where landscaping was done through the PPP approach. Besides the collection of secondary data from official records, primary data were collected through site visits, field surveys and interviews of PPP project partners.FindingsThe result shows that 89 percent of the respondents (road users) were pleased with the landscaping done on the road medians. Similarly, about 86 percent of the respondents felt more comfortable and safer to use the roads. Well-maintained road medians allow road-crossing at a regular interval which reduces the chance of an accident. The private parties have installed promotional billboards on the road medians and saved BDT 10.82 million a year. The public authority saves the maintenance budget amounting to BDT 23 million a year. The project achieves a triple-win situation. Despite some limitations, this PPP project has taken Khulna a step forward to achieve SDGs.Originality/valueThe findings have policy implications as the PPP project has enhanced the resilience of Khulna by addressing the relevant SDGs.


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