Tehran, Iran, August 7
By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
Gandhi Hotel-Hospital, a prestigious health and accommodation facility in Iranian capital Tehran, is seeking cooperation with Azerbaijani companies and hospitals to offer its services to the Azerbaijani nation.
“We are in talks with the Azerbaijani side in order to have some hospital or holding company from that country to cooperate with us so we can offer our services to Azerbaijan’s people,” Ahmad Salamzadeh, the managing director of the hotel-hospital’s imaging center told Trend August 7.
“In the past four months since the facilities were launched, we have served 78 CIP (commercially important person) and 192 VIP (very important person) health tourists, mostly from the Persian Gulf countries and Iraq, but we are expanding our scope.”
He said the hospital is trying to reach out to Europe and the Americas as well, noting as an example that while an open heart surgery costs $35,000 in the West, it will hardly reach $20,000 in Iran with accommodation and trip costs included.
“We are having a specialist stay in Norwruz Hospital in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, one week every month in order to offer our services there and reduce the costs of medications for Iraqi patients as much as possible and send them to Iran only when there is no alternative. We are planning on creating the same opportunity in Azerbaijan.”
The manager stated that the hotel-hospital provides its patients with not only accommodation during their stay, but also interpreters, travel facilities, and, for regular patients, special discount cards, spa facilities, free-of-charge travel and coverage of food costs during the travel, free transfer, etc.
Iran is already a popular destination with Azerbaijani health tourists. The capital Tehran and Tabriz, major Iranian city near the border with Azerbaijan, are two most-visited hubs for Azerbaijani health toursits.