A newly built rehabilitation center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, announced this week it will outsource its management to a South Korean hospital specializing in caring for the elderly, the South Korean government announced Friday.

Under the four-year project, South Korea's Bobath Memorial Hospital will be in charge of management and consulting services for the Dubai Rehabilitation Center, according to South Korea's health ministry.

  

The ministry said the deal is expected to be worth the equivalent of 20 billion won (US$17 million) over the four years, and will start as early as September. That sum will include $6 million in operational costs and the salaries and living expenses for 17 dispatched medical workers.

Bobath Memorial Hospital won the project in an international bid also contested by a hospital in Saudi Arabia and a hospital consulting firm in Canada.

  


"This is the first time one of our hospitals has been chosen to manage a public hospital overseas, and serves as a new model for making money," South Korean Health Minister Rim Che-min said Wednesday at an event held in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi to promote South Korean medical services. "We have cleared the path for South Korean hospitals to make inroads into the Middle East."

Rim met with Director General Qadhi Saeed Al Murooshid of the Dubai Health Authority in Dubai Thursday, at a ceremony where the president of Bobath Memorial Hospital, Ko Seok-bum, was presented with a certificate for the deal, officials said.

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Source: Yonhap News (May 25, 2012)