On October 17, Vitebsk /Diana Kurilo - BELTA/. More than 500 travel agencies in the Russian Federation are involved in organising medical tours to the Vitebsk region, as told to a BELTA correspondent by Yuri Derkach, Head of the Healthcare Department of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee. The travel agencies work in close cooperation with the tourism sector of Regional Hospital No. 2, which acts as a tour operator in the field of medical services for healthcare institutions in the region. The tour operator directly refers foreign clients to clinics based on their medical indications, and also provides a wide range of additional services, from hotel accommodation to leisure arrangements. The most popular services among foreigners are obstetrics, diagnostics of various diseases, and the services of dentists, surgeons, cardiologists, and proctologists are in high demand. Along with Russian patients, hospitals also receive patients from Latvia and Lithuania. At the same time, Baltic patients prefer to be treated in border areas, closer to home, and are satisfied with the quality and professionalism of medical staff from district centres. According to Yuri Derkach, medical tourism brings tangible income to hospitals. The foreign currency accounts of hospitals working with foreigners have an average of about 100,000 Russian roubles. These funds will primarily be directed towards further technical modernisation of healthcare institutions, the purchase of imported equipment, and staff incentives. The growth rate of extra-budgetary income of the region's medical institutions for the first 9 months of the current year compared to the same period last year was 210%. -0-

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