“We would like to, if it was opened by the government, to go into areas like in vitro fertilisation,” Dr Azad Moopen, chairman and founder of DM Healthcare, told Arabian Business.
At present, IVF treatment is only offered in government operated hospitals. Fertility is currently a major topic in the UAE as a recent UN report found that the emirates has one of the fastest declining birth rates in the world.
The UN research found that over the last three decades the UAE fertility rate has dropped from 5.7 children per woman to less than two.
“It is because they want to have more controls on that. They don’t want people to play around,” Moopen added.
However, he said he believes “it is time for the authorities to look at providing such avenues for the private sector”.
“What should be done by the government is to look at the individual organisations and establishments and those who have accreditation and [a] good reputation the government should allow such establishments to take care of these areas,” he said.
Moopen also said organ transplantation was an area that should be looked at in more detail in this region.
DM Healthcare currently has 70 healthcare units in the GCC and is aiming to have 300 in the Middle East and India by the year 2015.
Within the next five years the healthcare provider is planning to spend AED400m ($108.8m) and to add another 50 units to its network across the GCC.
The UAE healthcare sector is predicted to defy the global downturn and grow at an annual rate of more than 13 percent to 2012, according to a new report by research house RNCOS.
About IVF
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the womb, in vitro. IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. The process involves hormonally controlling the ovulatory process, removing ova (eggs) from the woman’s ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a fluid medium. The fertilised egg (zygote) is then transferred to the patient’s uterus with the intent to establish a successful pregnancy. The first “test tube baby”, Louise Brown, was born in 1978