Recent times have seen a growing number of foreign travellers seeking both leisure and healthcare services during their trips to Da Nang. Thanks to its diverse natural resources with exotic beaches and hot mineral springs, healthy environment, and relatively modern infrastructure system and healthcare facilities, Da Nang has affirmed its stature as an attractive medical tourism destination for visitors from both home and abroad.

Herb doctor Nguyen Van Dung examining a foreign patient at the 2nd facility of the Traditional Medicine Hospital

Last year, Da Nang welcomed 7.66 million visitors, 2,875 million of whom are foreigner. This was a positive signal for the city to head towards speeding up the development of lucrative medical tourism in which both Singapore and Thailand have pioneered for nearly 10 years.

Early this year, the municipal Health Department instructed medical establishments across the city to enhance the quality of their services and establish international medical wards to better serve high-spending medical tourists.

The 2^nd facility of the Da Nang Traditional Medicine Hospital, located at 342 Phan Chau Trinh Street in Hai Chau District, has caught up with the development trends of medical tourism through a wide range of treatment programmes.

Opened in 2017, the hospital’s Health Tourism Centre has effectively provided herbal medicine treatment and rehabilitation for tourists. After the first 2 years of operation, the unit has affirmed its reputation in both Viet Nam and the world.

The centre provided medical check-ups and treatments for 310 foreigners in total last year, and this figure reached 196 over the first half of this year. Those from South Korea accounted for the highest percentage of the total foreign patients, followed by such countries as Japan, China, the U.S., Philippines, Hungary, France, and Greece.

Nguyen Van Anh, the Director of the Traditional Medicine Hospital, said “Only when medical examination and treatment activities for tourists or foreigners are involved in the value added chain in tourism business do them become medical tourism product”.

In reality, after visiting many places in the city, tourists may get tired, especially in the face of erratic weather change. Coming to the Centre, they will enjoy moments of absolute relaxation whilst undergoing various treatment methods that leave them feeling completely rejuvenated, re-energised and renewed, including acupuncture, moxibustion, herbal massage, chiropractic, cupping, physiotherapy, and thread embedding. Given their health improvements, visitors feel more comfortable to continue hanging out to explore the city.

It is noticeable that the Centre has effectively used advanced treatment technologies transferred from foreign countries, including acupuncture and facial palsy treatment from the Kyung Hee University in South Korea’s Seoul.

Also, herbalists from this centre have participated in academic exchange activities relating to physiotherapy and cerebrovascular accident with their collegues from the US Steady Footsteps organisation.

The centre has won the trust of tourists from both home and abroad thanks to the efficiency of the technological applications in medical examinations and treatment, as well as the professionalism and dedication of the unit’s medical staff, including herb doctors.

Suffering from a hard-to-treat headache, Mr David J.S, an Australian national, had usually taken an amount of medications for pain relief, but no improvements were seen. During his journey to Da Nang 3 years ago, he started experiencing treatment at the Traditional Medicine Hospital. Luckily, since then, he has felt much better for more than a year.

In another successful case, Ms. Zhang C.X, a Chinese tourist, also received treatment at the hospital for her cervical spine syndrome-sparked neck pain and lumbar disc degeneration. She was happy with a pain relief of 30% after the first treatment occasion.

Her doctor Nguyen Van Dung, the Head of the Centre, affirmed, “Traditional medical tourism is completely capable of becoming a unique tourism product if it can fully tap many attractive, unique, original and typical elements of natural tourism and ethnic culture”.

Deputy Director of the municipal Department of Tourism Nguyen Xuan Binh affirmed the fact that development of medical tourism, healthcare and relaxation services will help the city identify specific target tourist market segments, increase the length of stay and average spending by visitors, hereby generating greater revenue from tourism.