Dubai's first ever "Korean hospital" is set to be built at Meydan Racecourse, after developers struck a deal worth AED 600 million.Meydan and Mir Hashem Khoory (MHK) Group have agreed a partnership to establish new healthcare facilities in the emirate and their first project will be a huge medical complex at the famous horse racing track.Although the area is best-known for its thoroughbred racing, owners of the site are keen to turn it into a multi-purpose venue.Leaders of Dubai have recently outlined their intention to transform the city into a global hub for medical tourists and this is just one of many new top-class hospitals that are likely to be built in the Gulf in the coming years.The 280,000-sq-ft facility will contain 170 beds and seven operating rooms. Around 600 highly-trained staff will also be employed by the hospital and more than half of these will come from Korea."With this step into healthcare services we will extend Meydan's exacting standards to other developments across our territory," commented HE Saeed Al Tayer of Meydan."The Korean hospital will be a testament to those standards and marks the beginning of many such partnerships with MHK."Dubai's medical sector has benefited from a sharp increase in investment in recent years and this is a trend that is likely to gather pace in the near future.Last month, director general of the Dubai Health Authority Essa Al Maidoor told Arabian Business that the growing number of impressive health institutions - coupled with increasingly relaxed visa restrictions - should encourage more foreigners to travel to the UAE for treatment.He said the number of health tourists visiting the emirate is growing by around ten to 15 per cent each year and the government has made medical services more accessible by launching a three-month visa specifically for people who require clinical assistance."The main challenge is to maintain it with quality - that's what I'm aiming to have in Dubai," he was quoted as saying.
