TEHRAN – Iran’s medical tourism revenues reached $1 billion during the past Iranian calendar year (ended on Mach 20), Saeid Karimi, the deputy minister of health, has said.

The Islamic Republic hosted some 1.2 million medical tourists last year, Mehr quoted the official as saying Friday.

The travelers, who came from 164 different countries, spent around one billion dollars during their stays in the country, Karimi stated.

The deputy minister said 247 hospitals and medical centers have been granted special licenses for medical tourism.

Iran has been ranked 46th destination for medical tourism [within the 2020-2021 Medical Tourism Index], he added.

People from the neighboring countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Oman, Bahrain, Armenia, and Tajikistan, constitute the lion’s share of medical tourists arriving in Iran, Karimi said.

In addition to medical centers and hospitals, hotels, restaurants, transport systems, and other service institutions benefit from medical tourism, which is a currency-generating industry, the official explained.

Last week, Mahdi Safari, the deputy foreign minister for economic diplomacy, said Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs plans to attract six million medical tourists per year. Safari made the remarks in a meeting attended by top officials from the tourism and health ministries and a host of other travel insiders, hospital administrators and tour operators.

Speaking at the meeting, the deputy tourism minister, Ali-Asghar Shalbafian, said the most important problem in the field of medical tourism was a disagreement between the relevant institutions and the lack of a single trustee for this tourism field.

Mohammad Hossein Niknam, who presides over the Ministry of Health’s Department for International Cooperation, reminded the attendees of the high potential the Islamic Republic enjoys in the field of medical tourism.

Medical tourism is booming worldwide, as about 20 to 24 million people are traveling for medical treatments annually. Factors such as increased care needs over longer lifespans, rising healthcare costs, and constant pressures on some insurance industries are reasons behind why some opt to travel abroad.

Regarding price competitiveness, Iran currently ranks first in the world, but the country has not been very successful in attracting potential travelers like other competitors like Singapore and Turkey. People from the Persian Gulf littoral states, Iraq and Syria as well as Iranian expatriates residing in Canada and Germany constituted the majority of medical travelers to the Islamic Republic, who received plastic, cosmetics, open-heart, and orthopedic surgeries amongst other treatments over the past couple of years.

AFM