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Thailand

Thai­land – offi­cially the King­dom of Thai­land—is a mag­nif­i­cent coun­try that expand­s more than 500,000 km2 into Southeast Asia, with coasts on the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thai­land. It bor­ders Myan­mar to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Cam­bo­dia to the southeast and Malaysia to the south. This is a strate­gic loca­tion right at the heart of Asia – what is regarded today as the largest grow­ing eco­nomic mar­ket.

Health­care mar­ket:

Today, Thailand’s Health­care mar­ket is worth approx­i­mately US $13 billion and con­tin­ues to grow steadily. Accord­ing to the WHO, Thai­land is one of the most desired des­ti­na­tions in Asia for health-conscious tourists. The coun­try is among the con­tem­po­rary pio­neers of med­ical tourism on the entire continent, receiv­ing over a mil­lion for­eign patients each year in more than 956 pub­lic and 309 pri­vate hos­pi­tals. In 2012, Thailand’s total healthcare expen­di­ture was around 6.6% of their total GDP. Cur­rently, the local indus­try in Thai­land is strategically headed towards value-added prod­ucts. These include the encour­age­ment of R&D on hepati­tis C vac­cines, blood pres­sure and anti-HIV drugs, herbal anti-viral and anti-cancer treat­ments, sup­ple­men­tary prod­ucts for weight loss and so on.

Thai­land offer­s the most com­pre­hen­sive range of med­ical treat­ments in the world right now; numer­ous Thai doc­tors have stud­ied med­i­cine and trained as spe­cial­ists abroad, and these vastly expe­ri­enced physi­cians now work in pri­vate Thai hos­pi­tals and clin­ics, in order to offer their exper­tise and knowl­edge to Thai and for­eign patients alike.

OTC and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mar­ket:

Thailand’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mar­ket is one of the most promis­ing in all of Asia, cur­rently val­ued at approx­i­mately US $4.3 billion. It is esti­mated that by 2018, it will be the eighth-largest mar­ket in the Asia-Pacific region. The mar­ket con­tin­ues to grow steadily, mostly due to the sup­port of the government’s uni­ver­sal health­care sys­tem. Since 2009, the gov­ern­ment has raised the health expen­di­ture bud­get from US $74 to $84 per capita. Seventy-eight per cent of the total mar­ket sales are attrib­uted to hos­pi­tals, and the remain­ing 12% to drugstores. Thailand’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mar­ket is com­prised of locally pro­duced domes­tic drugs (gener­ics), locally pro­duced inter­na­tional brands and numer­ous imports.