Fast recovery in Phuket - 2 weeks after the tsunami
“We are now ready for medical tourism again” says Piyarat Kulvanich, director of sales and marketing at Phuket Health & Travel, a travel agency owned by Bangkok Phuket Hospital, specializing in medical tourism.
Just 2 weeks after the tsunami did hit Phuket much of life is back to normal again. Phuket got hit but in some very
limited beach areas only. A small number of beach front hotels are closed for repair. “Our hospital is located far away
from the beach so we did not get any problems at all from the tsunami.” continues Piyarat.
“Our hospital (Bangkok Phuket hospital) did treat 2500 patients in just a few days time and we had to fly in many
doctors and staff from our other hospitals in the same group” says Piyarat. The private owned Bangkok Phuket hospital
belongs to the BGH group, the biggest private hospital group in Thailand with 13 hospitals covering many parts of
Thailand.
Most of the patients from the tsunami have already left the hospital and work at the hospital is now back to normal and
ready for tourists that want to use medical service like plastic surgery, dental treatments, or eye LASIK at a fraction
of the price in most western countries. Khun Piyarat says that before the tsunami many persons from example Sweden went
to Phuket to combine dental treatment and holiday. The low price for the medical treatment here could in many cases pay
for the entire holiday compared to the same dental treatment in Sweden.
“One Swedish man told me that just the difference in price for one root canal treatment was enough to by an airline
return ticket from Stockholm to Phuket” says Ulf Mikaelsson a Swedish part time worker at Phuket Health travel. He
continues “I have been working with marketing of medical tourism here at Phuket Health Travel and I can just say that I
am very impressed about how the hospital could cope with the massive amount of patients after the tsunami. Now
everything is back to normal and we are just waiting for tourists to arrive again”
There is no risk to travel to Phuket and many countries have lately revised their earlier travel warnings about Phuket.
“We have food, drinking water, clothes, electricity, phone lines, Internet and there has never been any problem with
infrastructure during or after the tsunami.” says Ulf.
Phuket is totally dependent on tourism Industry and will suffer every day until tourism gets back to normal. The best
way to help this area to recover is to come here as a tourist and why not combine your holiday with a medical check up
or dental treatments. For sure you will be more than welcome
For further information: Piyarat Kulvanich, director of sales and marketing, Website http://www.phuket-health-travel.com.