Thailand’s status as a hub for medical tourism could be helping it contain the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), government and health officials said, after confirming its first case of the deadly virus more than a week ago.

Tourism accounts for about 10 per cent of the Thai economy, and the country is also the top destination in southeast Asia for patients seeking low-cost, quality healthcare, with an average 1.4 million medical tourists a year, compared with 600,000 for Singapore, a Thai medical tourism association said.

That meant the stakes were high for Thailand when the health ministry reported the first case of MERS in a 75-year-old man from Oman, who had travelled to Bangkok for treatment for a heart condition.

Although authorities said 176 people had been exposed to the MERS patient, Deputy Health Minister Vachira Pengchan said there were no new cases.

“The very fact that we are a travel and medical hub works in our favour and allows us to be prepared,” Tourism Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul told Reuters.

We saw what happened in South Korea, we had time to prepare

“It is our experience handling foreign visitors and medical tourists from high-risk regions like the Middle East and South Korea. Thailand is also prepared because we saw what happened in South Korea, we had time.”

As well as being a gateway for many of the more than 25 million visitors to Thailand each year, Bangkok is also one of the region's main aviation hubs.

At the city’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, face masks were handed out to passengers at the weekend, while Thailand’s health and tourism ministers showed reporters thermoscanning equipment and special aeroplane parking bays set aside for flights coming in from high-risk countries.

A Thai Airways worker cleans an aircraft cabin at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Thailand. Photo: Chaiwat Subprasom/ReutersA Thai Airways worker cleans an aircraft cabin at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Thailand. Photo: Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

The airport has ordered heightened screening of arrivals from South Korea and the Middle East, general manager Sirote Duangratana told reporters.

The unidentified man whom laboratory tests confirmed on June 18 had MERS was a patient at the high-end Bumrungrad Hospital. Popular with international visitors, it says 20 per cent of its patients are from the Middle East.The sick man was later moved to an infectious disease institute.

Prasert Thongcharoen, an advisor to Thailand’s Disease Control Department, said he had investigated Bumrungrad’s handling of the MERS case and found it to be “flawless”.“They put the patient in an isolation room and everything that was needed for infectious control was done,” he said in a telephone interview.

The Geneva-based World Health Organisation, in an e-mailed response to Reuters, also commended Thailand’s response.

“Thailand diagnosed and isolated the MERS patient in a designated, well-equipped facility,” said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, WHO Southeast Asia Region.

Josef Woodman, CEO of Patients Beyond Borders, a US-based website that offers information about medical travel, said Thailand could see a temporary drop in visitors but, as with the impact of last year’s coup, it was likely to be shortlived.

“I believe, as with social and political unrest in Thailand... a temporary drop in tourism and medical tourism may be experienced, usually with a rapid recovery to normal levels,” he said.

Josephine Guillot, 28, a French postgraduate student travelling around southeast Asia, had come to the Bumrungrad Hospital for a check-up despite knowing Thailand’s first MERS patient was treated there.

“I’m comfortable getting treatment,” she said. “The news doesn’t deter me.”

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