Dubai’s Meydan Racecourse to get $160m hospital

The developer behind Dubai’s Meydan Racecourse has entered a joint agreement to build an AED600m (US$163m) medical facility at the venue.

The agreement between Meydan and Mir Hashem Khoory (MHK) will see the establishment of the emirate’s first Korean Hospital, part of an initiative to cement Dubai’s credentials as a major medical tourism destination.

More than half of the 280,000 sqft facility’s 600 medical staff will be imported from Korea to work at the hospital, which will have 170 beds and seven operating rooms. Its specialisms will include dermatology, cosmetic surgery, lasik, spine surgery, gynaecology and adult and paediatric rehabilitation.

“With this step into healthcare services we will extend Meydan's exacting standards to other developments across our territory,” said HE Saeed Al Tayer for Meydan. ”The Korean hospital will be a testament to those standards, and marks the beginning of many such partnerships with MHK.”

Construction on the project will begin this year, the developers said, with completion due for 2015.

Investment in the healthcare sector across the United Arab Emirates has tripled in the past five years and is expected to increase from US$3.2bn in 2012 to US$11.9bn in 2015, contributing to more than 6 percent of non-oil gross domestic product.