T

he Bali administration is aiming to develop the island as a medical tourism destination in a bid to boost tourist arrivals and fund free medical healthcare for poor residents.

Governor Made Mangku Pastika said Bali had a great tourism industry, but also untapped potential for medical tourism.

“Considering the huge population in Indonesia and the fact that there are many expatriates in Bali who go abroad to get medical treatment, why don’t we develop the island’s medical tourism,” the governor said early this week.

To realize the target, the administration will build an international standard hospital.

“We need to have one international standard hospital that we design as a tourism hospital,” Pastika said.

The construction of the hospital will commence early next year, and is estimated to cost Rp 200 billion (US$23.6 million) to Rp 300 billion. The plan is to complete the hospital before the APEC conference in 2013.

Pastika said the hospital would be built on a three-hectare plot belonging to the provincial administration on Jl. By Pass Ngurah Rai, Sanur. A feasibility study is underway to realize the project.

The project will be financed through the provincial budget, the governor said.

With a large number of tourists coming to Bali, the governor said he was upbeat the international hospital would yield a high return on investment.

More than 2 million foreigners come to Bali for holiday every year. About 1.27 million tourists visited the island in the first half of this year, a 10 percent increase from the same period last year, according to the Bali Tourism Agency.

“If we could attract at least 5 percent of the tourists to come to Bali to get medical treatment, we would have served a hundred thousand of them. That number still excludes domestic tourists,” Pastika said.

“Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are advancing in medical tourism, so why can’t we?”

 He said he recognized the need to prepare competent human resources to manage the international hospital.

“This will be one of the results of the feasibility study. We should consider who would be able to manage this hospital, because it would not be easy.”

He said the hospital would also accommodate poor patients covered by the Bali Mandara free healthcare scheme (JKBM).

Al Purwa, the chairman of Indonesian Tours and Travel (Asita) in Bali, said developing Bali as a medical tourism destination was a good idea, and that the provincial administration should have looked into the opportunity 10 years.

He said Bali had the chance to attract more than the target of 5 percent of tourist arrivals as medical tourists, considering that the patients would be accompanied by their families, as well as relatives that would come to visit them.