The Philippine Institute for Development Studies has issued a press release stating that the country needs better infrastructure and a networking plan to be able to better compete in the area of medical tourism, where the Philippines in spite of its language advantage over places like Thailand has fallen far behind.While these recommendations are not exactly surprising, the press release and especially the paper ‘Trade and Liberalization of Health and Related Services’ published by the same institute are good reads for anybody interested in medical tourism in general, not only from the Manila angle.

For me the summary conclusion about the state of affairs in the Philippines, a country where I have no personal experience with the hospital system, is that things are not looking pretty but that they have a few outstanding facilities.

The St. Luke’s Hospital for example was accredited by the Joint International Commission of the US already in 2003 - at that time only the second hospital in Asia, after the Bumrungrad Hospital in Thailand.

Medical City and Asian Hospital are too more hospitals which are considered to be of an international standard.