Speaking at both the Private Equity in Healthcare Roundtable and Healthcare Management Forum held during this week’s Arab Health 2012, TVM Capital MENA Chairman & CEO Dr. Helmut M. Schuehsler encouraged GCC governments to shift the focus from direct delivery to regulating, insuring or paying for healthcare services.

According to Dr. Schuehsler, “Many GCC countries continue to spend heavily on expanding public healthcare facilities to accommodate the needs of growing populations; but exploring this alternative strategy would increase investor interest and capital flows to the sector several-fold.”

Dr. Schuehsler also commented that while risk appetite seems to be returning amongst investors, traditional targets such as new private hospitals are no longer such an attractive proposition. “Just because hospitals are full doesn’t necessarily mean new private ones are required. It may be a matter of using public and private beds more efficiently or strengthening out-of-hospital care and consumer health education to prevent unnecessary admissions in the first place” he explained.

TVM Capital MENA is the first international private equity house with a focus in healthcare to establish operations in the MENA region. The three founding investors of the TVM Capital MENA Healthcare Private Equity Fund are the IFC (International Financing Corporation), GE Healthcare and The Olayan Group. The fund currently has two portfolio companies, ProVita International Medical Center, Abu Dhabi and Bourn Hall Clinic, Dubai and India; both of which are consistent with the strategy of involving leading global operators to provide unique and specialized healthcare services in the Middle East.

Representing a groundbreaking healthcare offering for the region, ProVita International Medical Center, Abu Dhabi is the region’s first healthcare provider to offer state of the art long-term care for ventilated patients and those requiring continuous medical and nursing intervention for serious medical conditions, in a non-hospital setting.

The second TVM Capital MENA investment in the region, Bourn Hall Clinic, had its opening of its first in-vitro-fertilization (IVF) clinic in Kochi, Kerala, India in July 2011 and is currently building out facilities in Delhi and Dubai. Dubai will be the BHI hub for the Gulf region and is expected to open soon. The founders of Bourn Hall invented IVF in 1978 with the first successful birth of a child conceived through an IVF procedure. As the ultimate testament of Bourn Hall’s world-leading expertise in the field of fertility, its founder, Dr. Bob Edwards, was awarded in 2010 the Nobel Prize in medicine and a Knighthood in 2011 for the invention of IVF.

-ENDS-

Notes to editor
TVM Capital MENA Ltd. is a private equity firm focusing on investments in health care in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). TVM Capital MENA operates out of the Dubai International Financial Center and is licensed and regulated by the DFSA. The team of TVM Capital MENA is affiliated to the international Life Sciences Practice of TVM Capital. The TVM Capital Life Science Practice currently manages €820 million from more than 50 investors. The investment professionals draw upon the experience, international approach and demonstrated success of about 80 exits from almost 120 investments. Exits include nearly 40 initial public offerings on the NASDAQ, and the London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Vienna Stock Exchanges and 25 trade sales and mergers. TVM Capital Life Science operates with an integrated team from its headquarters in Munich and a representative office in Boston. The team combines long-standing international investment experience and operating track records with extensive networks in and knowledge of the MENA region.

More information please visit: www.tvm-capital.ae

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