Bali to build international hospital

The new facility will provide care for Indonesians who get treatment overseas.

The Indonesian government announced it is building an international hospital on the newly-closed Bali Beach Golf Course, allowing foreign doctors to practice in Indonesia for the first time.

"If this comes to fruition, we expect that no more of our people will travel overseas to get health treatment," President Joko Widodo said in a ground-breaking ceremony on 28 December 2021 for a project undertaken in partnership with the Mayo Clinic.

The new Bali International Hospital will open in 2023 in what Widodo has described as a special economic zone, providing a convenient alternative for an estimated 600,000 Indonesians who now seek treatment abroad.

However, the Indonesian Doctors' Association strongly opposed opening the local medical profession to foreign practitioners. They added they will only relent if the government will confine any relaxation of the rule to oncologists and other specialists.