IHH Healthcare girds for Singapore-to-Turkey vaccine push

[KUALA LUMPUR] IHH Healthcare, Asia's most valuable hospital group, said it is ready to administer coronavirus vaccine once they are rolled out in the 10 countries it operates in.

The Malaysian company has a trained staff of 55,000 across 80 hospitals it runs from Turkey to Singapore, as well as cold-storage facilities required to store the shots, managing director and chief executive officer Kelvin Loh Chi-Keon said in an interview.

"We still continue to battle Covid-19 and as governments make the vaccine available in the different geographies that we serve, we stand ready to support them," he said.

Health systems around the world are shifting focus from research and development to distribution following vaccine news from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

In India, which is battling the world's second-worst outbreak, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise this week said it is ready to inoculate one million people a day after the government unveils the deployment plan.

For IHH, the immunisation drive comes at a time when medical tourism, a key revenue stream for hospitals, has disappeared as resurgences force countries to keep borders closed.

RECORD CASES

Hospitals in Malaysia, the company's home market, may earn RM500 million (S$164.5 million) in revenue from medical tourists this year, the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council said in September. That's far short of the RM1.7 billion the industry earned in 2019, and its earlier 2020 target for RM2 billion.

New coronavirus cases in the country hit a record 2,234 on Thursday.

Still, IHH said it expects to meet its target of doubling its return-on-equity in the next five years. Covid-related services in Singapore contributed 10 per cent to its third-quarter revenue, while their share from India was as high as 26 per cent, Mr Loh said.

"We will continue to grow, but in as capital efficient manner as possible," he said. "Covid-19 doesn't change that."

The company's return on equity stands at 3 per cent at present.