On the 13th of December 2022, one of the most popular and well-visited hospitals in the Maldives, ADK hospital announced that they will be increasing their prices effective from 15h December 2022.
ADK Hospital
The expensive life in the Maldives is old news. Complaints about the increasing food prices, rent, gas and even the prices of extremely basic necessities such as healthcare being on the high end every single year are common. As people struggle to pay for the most basic necessities in life, it seems like things get just a tad bit more expensive each passing year.
Even with the expected price hikes in the Maldives, 2022 has been one of the toughest years for the country’s economy. In addition to the cost of recovering from the two-year-long pandemic that had the tourism industry in lockdown, the conflict that started between Russia and Ukraine early into the year also led to increased gas prices. If that was not bad enough, the Maldives reached new levels of debt in 2022 and discussions surrounding several measures to combat the increasing debt of the country started this year, with one of the many consequences being a hike in taxes for both locals and tourists in the coming year.
ADK prices on the hike
And as we are finally coming to the end of the year 2022, thinking there possibly cannot be any more bad news, it appears that this year was meant to end with another price hike. On the 13th of December 2022, one of the most popular and well-visited hospitals in the Maldives, ADK hospital announced that they will be increasing their prices effective from the 15th December 2022.
According to a statement by the hospital, the running costs of the hospital have drastically increased since the economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the hospital's decision to increase its prices to combat the rising running costs.
The hospital also revealed its decision to implement these hiked-up prices in stages to make it easier for the public to adjust to these new changes, and while no additional information was released by ADK hospital, the information regarding the new prices is to be made available at the hospital's information counter.
Unaffordable healthcare is already a major problem in the Maldives, and this increase in price will surely only add to the problems as ADK is one of the most visited hospitals in the country.
With only a few options available in terms of good healthcare, many were already paying extremely high prices for the services available at the hospital. Even with the national insurance scheme Aasandha being implemented at ADK, the services at this hospital are still unaffordable for many, but are left with no choice as the only affordable healthcare is the public hospital Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) which is famously known for queues so long it usually takes months to consult a specialist!
This increase in price also comes after the Government ‘attempted’ to implement a price ceiling for medicine by the start of 2022, but clearly failed to do so. While the rising cost of getting medicine was an issue that needed to be tackled years ago, now it appears that medicine is not the only thing that is going to be unaffordable in the Maldives as every single step of getting treatment appears to be on the hike with this new price increase by ADK.
