With the current shortage of hospitals and clinics, an ageing population and the rise of medical tourism, the region will see a big demand for more and better healthcare facilities over the next five years, a report said.

Even to simply maintain the current provision rate of hospital beds per person would require the creation of 10,500 additional hospital beds in the five major cities across the region over the next five years, and assuming a typical ratio of 150 beds per hospital means there would be a need for around 70 additional hospitals, the report by JLL said.

In the wake of Cityscape 2017, which opened today in Dubai, JLL, a global real estate services firm, has released a new healthcare report to highlight the huge opportunity for investors in the Mena real estate market over the next five years.

The number of people aged 65 years is forecast to increase by 4.4 per cent per annum over the next five years, according to the JLL healthcare report – and as a result, the number of people over 65 will increase from 21 million to 26 million by 2020.

The Mena region is also currently lagging behind more developed economies in terms of both per capita spending on healthcare and provision of hospital beds. The per capita spending on healthcare in the UAE is only 17 per cent of what is being spent in Switzerland, and Mena has an average of only 1.9 beds per 1,000 population in comparison to an OECD average of 4.8 beds.

If there is a need to increase the provision of hospital beds in line with the current OECD average of 4.8 beds per one thousand people, a staggering 470,000 additional beds would be required, which equates to 3,130 new hospitals, to be developed across these same five major cities by 2022.

While government spending on healthcare is increasing across the region, there is a growing opportunity for more real estate investor involvement in the healthcare sector.

Developers of large planned communities in the region are already recognising the need and incorporating clinics and other non-specialist healthcare facilities in their developments, the report said. - TradeArabia News Service

The video report can be watched here.