{"id":59502,"date":"2012-03-30T06:47:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T10:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/?p=59502"},"modified":"2012-03-30T09:09:23","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T13:09:23","slug":"dominica-as-a-health-tourism-destination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/homepage\/features\/commentary\/dominica-as-a-health-tourism-destination\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominica as a health tourism destination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/all-news\/commentary\/shame-on-caricom\/attachment\/commentary-29\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39536\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-39536\" title=\"commentary\" src=\"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/commentary2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"286\" height=\"206\" \/><\/a>Today the reality is the Banana industry and the entire Agricultural sector are on the brink of collapse in spite of recent efforts to resuscitate that sector. In light of these realities, another long term, sustainable and profitable industry \u2013 (possibly health tourism) &#8211; must quickly replace these former main-stay industries with sustainable solutions in order to provide hard needed and realizable cash flow to Dominica and its citizens.<\/p>\n<p>As more people around the world take an active interest in their health, a travel segment known as health tourism has evolved to fill their needs. Not to be confused with medical tourism, which focuses more on surgical procedures, health tourism is a much broader concept centered mainly around resorts designed to pamper and improve the body and relax the mind.<\/p>\n<p>While we must continue to explore and court external funding sources and investments, we must continue to &#8216;dip our buckets&#8217; where we are and start taking greater advantage and leveraging our island home\u2019s abundant opportunities and resources. But these options require careful and deliberate planning and focus investments.\u00a0 With proper, long term and consistent planning, cooperation, commitment, political will and strong effective (less myopic) leadership, proper marketing and promotion, the development of Health Tourism can lead\u00a0 to long term and sustainable developmental for our island home.<\/p>\n<p>Today countries such as South Africa, Israel, Costa Rica and islands along the Mediterranean Sea and others, are using the unique attractiveness of their lands to lure health tourists from all over the world. A growing number of patients with deep pockets from affluent countries are searching for global destinations with natural alternative and non-invasive forms of medical and health treatments.<\/p>\n<p>Affluent patients and patrons from North America, Europe and the Orient (baby-boomers) are constantly exploring ways to extend their lives and well-being. They are traveling to distant places for all sorts of natural therapeutic methods of health treatment to further extent their stay on earth. Some of these tried and true methods of healing and treatment modalities have been successfully used and embraced by ancient civilizations and traditional cultures for centuries.<\/p>\n<p>Dominica is uniquely qualified to capitalize on this booming niche market of health tourism. But in order to have a fair chance of succeeding, a different way of thinking, marketing and acting on the part of those in government and the tourism industry must be exhibited. Government and the hotel industry must provide and facilitate avant-garde, competent, progressive (outside of the box thinking) and visionary leadership in order for this venture to succeed.<\/p>\n<p>It is imperative that the government (of the day) works closely with the hotel, non-profit (NGOs) business, medical socieity, rural communities\/councils and other groups to devise a carefully planned long-term strategic plan. Health tourism is a bit different from the other forms of tourism due to the fact that it is a form of tele-medicine and like conventional medicine; there are inherent ethical rules, codes of conduct, practice guidelines and patterns.<\/p>\n<p>The medical community and the Ministries of Health, Education, Tourism, Agriculture and Division of Forestry should explore and continue to investigate the medicinal values of our natural resources such as the sulphur springs, boiling lake, hot Springs, waterfalls and tropical rain forests. The holistic healing powers of plants and herbs such as &#8216;bazalick,&#8217; &#8216;seimeicountrar, (teas)&#8217; &#8216;tabac zobie&#8217; (jumbie\u2019s tobacco) and others should be continuously promoted. Even the relaxing and therapeutic traditional music of the Dominican hills and valleys (Jing-Ping and Bel-la) should be promoted as healing dances similar to the music of great classical composers as Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach.<\/p>\n<p>Dominica as a Health Tourism destination has the very real potential of resulting in substantial financial returns in a few years if the proper investment and attention is given to this viable initiative. Health Tourism compliments Eco-Tourism in many ways \u2013not just with its logo- \u2018Defy the Everyday\u2019, but in its inherent values and applications.\u00a0 This can only be a win-win proposition for the Nature Isle of the Caribbean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today the reality is the Banana industry and the entire Agricultural sector are on the brink of collapse in spite of recent efforts to resuscitate that sector. In light of these realities, another long term, sustainable and profitable industry \u2013&#8230;","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Dominica as a health tourism destination - Dominica News Online<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/homepage\/features\/commentary\/dominica-as-a-health-tourism-destination\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dominica as a health tourism destination - Dominica News Online\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today the reality is the Banana industry and the entire Agricultural sector are on the brink of collapse in spite of recent efforts to resuscitate that sector. 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