After China scrapped its one-child policy in October 2015, more couples have been trying to have more children but not all are able to conceive naturally.

This is where Malaysia hopes to offer its expertise and boost the medical tourism industry at the same time.

The Malaysian Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC) estimates that of the 90 million couples in China looking to have a second child, at least 40 million are over 40 years old.

MHTC CEO Sherene Azli said the market size presents opportunities for assisted reproductive technology where Malaysia has a competitive edge.

“For example, our in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment success rate is actually among the highest in the world at about 66% compared with the world average of 50%,” she told The Edge Financial Daily in an interview.

“Because of that, we feel that Malaysia is in a very good place to position itself as the fertility hub for the region.”

Healthcare tourists from China were already Malaysia’s second-fastest growing market in 2016, according to MHTC. That year, arrivals from China grew 20% year-on-year, behind Vietnam at 83%.

The growing healthcare tourists from China are slowly reducing Malaysia’s reliance on Indonesian medical travellers who made up some 60% of the volume in the past, The Edge report said.

The Malaysian medical tourism industry’s revenue broke through the RM1 billion mark for the first time in 2016.

MHTC declined to provide a breakdown of medical tourist proportions and average spending per head by country of origin. Its data also excludes numbers from dental and wellness treatments.

It said fertility and cardiology treatments were among the top five treatments sought after by healthcare travellers to Malaysia, alongside orthopaedics, oncology and aesthetics.

In 2016, Malaysia welcomed 921,000 healthcare travellers, which generated RM1.123 billion in revenue. The medical tourism sector sustained a compounded annual growth rate of 15% between 2011 and 2016.