Discover Moldova with #MOLDPRES: Healthcare Travel Association from Moldova - principal tourist innovation of 2024 year

The tourism is one of the key priorities of Moldova’s government – and the forum dedicated to actors from this industry, held on 27 September, was an opportunity to promote the tourism potential of Moldova, to exchange good practices and bring professionals from the sector to the forefront. And its title, The Tourism and Peace, is meant to emphasize the unique role of tourism as instrument for mutual understanding.   
Along with numerous successful examples in the tourism industry, boosted by technological innovations which change the things for the better, re-model them and adapt them ‘’on the fly,’’ the Association of Healthcare Travel of Moldova is worth being mentioned, nominated as tourist innovation No 1 of the year.   
Moldova aligned with the global healthcare travel map in 2022
Moldova aligned with the global healthcare travel map in 2022. The Healthcare Travel Association of Moldova was launched in Chisinau – an important step in the development and promotion of the medical services in the country.   
The goal of the association’s foundation was to encourage and facilitate the access of foreign patients to medical services provided in Moldova, as well as to facilitate the access of Moldova’s citizens to quality medicine from abroad.   
The association is led by Natalia Ciobanu – PhD, regional doctor of the Turkish Healthcare Travel Council.    
Natalia Ciobanu: Our country has good physicians and a great potential. The healthcare travel is an industry which can contribute to the development of our traditional tourism.
The Healthcare Travel Association of Moldova, president of the Global Healthcare Travel Council   
In the last summer, the official ceremony of taking over by Moldova, represented by the Healthcare Travel Association, of the chairmanship of the Global Healthcare Travel Council (GHTC), took place in Chisinau. Participants in the event unveiled the roadmap for the mandate of the 2024-2026 years and highlighted the activities aimed at developing the healthcare travel for medium and long term, as well as at promoting the healthcare services, professionals and Moldova’s image internationally.  
Natalia Ciobanu: Among the priorities for the 2024-2026 years, there are: attraction of investments, implementation of last generation technologies, launch of the GHTC Academy, in order to facilitate the exchange of experience between the members and the creation of the healthcare electronic system, which can be used by patients from any country of the world. Also, we are set to accredit internationally more clinics from Moldova and to develop the Health Tech Park from the Codru town.     
Emin Cakmak, found and honorific president of GHTC: Moldova has a big resource; the human one. This is all you need, in order to conquer the world and numerous healthcare tourists in the country.  
Turkey, for instance, presently receives patients from 189 countries and the annual income from healthcare travel for the country’s economy amounts to 2 billion euros. 
The state’s authorities welcomes the progress made by the Healthcare Travel Association of Moldova since the foundation till present, appreciating the determination of the team and of its members to consolidate the position of Moldova on the map of the global healthcare travel.    
Sergiu Prodan, Culture Minister: For us, the tourism is also a way of promoting the social justice and of sustainable development, as well as an important component of the economy – a strong economy means an extra step to the European integration.  
In last April, at the general Assembly of GHTC, in which over 50 countries participated, Moldovan got the majority of votes, outrunning Germany and Saudi Arabia, registered in the same race for getting the chairmanship of the Global Healthcare Travel Council.  
The institutional partners of the project are the Health Ministry, Culture Ministry, National Tourism Office, Chisinau city hall, the National Inbound and Domestic Tourism Agency, the Investment Agency of Moldova, AmCham Moldova, the Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, with strategic partners: United States Agency for International Development, through the Rural Competitiveness and Resilience Activity in Moldova Project and Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund.  
Correspondent: Lilia Grubii