Good Afternoon,
I have just come across this site so this is my first post!

We move to Dubai at the end of Aug 08 from Singapore. My wife is pregnant and due in Nov(great timing I know!). Can anyone recommend a good hospital to have the baby and the precare and also the costs involved as we will be paying ourselves( Apparently being pregnant is a pre existing condition and therefore not covered by health insurance in my new job!!)

Regards

TFG

hiya...
do a search, there have been a few threads on this subject not so long ago, that way you'll probably find all the answers you are after...

Congratulations! you wil have to go down the private route I am afraid as if you are not registered with the Goverment Hospitals by I think about 18 weeks, they won't take you. There are plenty of good hospitals here though, so don't worry, just start saving

can't help with the hospital, though there's some hospital and doctor info in the wiki....worth registering the birth at the embassy though.

Don't you need to do that anyway in order to get the Birth Certificate authenticated? We did so in Jeddah...

There is cost information on the Medcare hospital site; http://www.medcarehospital.com/packa...-delivery.html

And American Hospital; http://www.ahdubai.com/healthpk/maternity_normal.aspx

Does anyone have any experience of the American Hospital and Medcare to compare the two? We heard lots about the American, but Medcare is more accessible for us, both from home and work if needed. Trying to establish if it is as good a hospital.

Also, there was a mention on here about a company that does the running about to get a birth registered, passports etc... can anyone recall what this was as my search came up with nothing.

Thanks

my wife just deliverd 6 weeks ago, we went to Welcare in Garhoud. was impressed. Only prob is that there are only two midwives/Drs so they are very busy and we found we were waiting sometimes up to an hour for appoitments for check ups. But for the delivery and after care found them very good. Total cost was I think 10,000 dhs. including 2 nights stay and I could stay over too.

We had our baby at American Hosp, really good. Excellent facilities along with great staff that were both incredibly caring and professional. Costs were as per the website + they refund anything you don't use, i.e. we only stayed 2 nights so got difference back.

We also had friends who had baby at Medcare, again they highly recommended it. Both hospitals have open days if you want to go have look around the facilities. I know the American allows you to use your own ob/gyn for birth if you want to and have not availed of they staff, but I’m not sure about Medcare.

One point to bear in mind, is be firm in your decsions, like most things diffrenet people have different opinions / ways of doing things so decide want you want, and unless baby is in jeopordy stick to your guns. For instance the first night we were there the nurses wanted to give baby a bottle so my wife could rest, but this went against what we wanted. Good intent but if we had not been insistent or firm they would have done what they thought was the right thing. Nothing to be worried about but just make sure you know what you want and stick to your guns....

The co that do the some of the running around for you afterwards are called Medi Express. Google them and the info is there, one point to note is that their website states they register the birth with you Embassy but they no longer offer that service and you will need to manage it (although it is simple)

Also make sure you do everything within the 120 days (including residence visa) otherwise they DO fine you (I just found that out as forgot to get the visa bit done til just after the deadline)

We went through the whole cycle 5 months ago so if you or your wife want a chat about if feel free to pm me. There’s quite a bit of info and as more questions come up it may be easier than typing War and Peace each time…

If not good luck and all the best…..

our baby was born at Al Wasl....as we didnt have medical cover for pregnancy. We now have the cover and if we have another child we will go back to Al Wasl. It was fantastic..granted the AH is nicer looking and better decorated and is one of 'the' places for Jumeriah Jane to spout thats where young Chantallisa was born, and it is a great hospital, however the fact that remains is that if there are major issues during childbirth, then they will be transferred to Al Wasl, as that is where the Dubai expertise is..

Granted they had an incident in the SCBU about 5 months ago, however our experiences of the place is very positive..

FWIW, the idea that the AH can't cope with certain emergency childbirth situations is something of a longstanding Dubai myth, and one that the staff at the AH are rather tired of having to debunk

Bottom line is, there's nothing that AW can handle that AH can't. The big difference is cost. Many of the corporate insurance policies that cover maternity specifically exclude NICU care, which is terrifyingly expensive at AH. Hence, what often happens is that babies born at AH that need NICU care are transferred to one of the government hospitals after they're born, simply because their parents are going to have to pay out of their own pockets and so can't afford to keep them at AH.

The "cheap" end of NICU care at AH is about 3000-7000 dhs per day. For premature babies, you're into the tens of thousands of dirhams per day, and you're looking at paying that for weeks on end.

no, you can just get a passport....the reason it's worth getting, if you lose passport, it's easier to prove your entitled to one, well for the kid, especially if you the parents kick the bucket.

Also can you imagine moving away and then in 10 years time trying to get another copy (for whatever reason) of the UAE birth certificate issued if you are non resident living in your home country. I shudder just thinking about how painful that would be. Having one already issued from your own national system will make it so much easier to get duplciates.

We were a little excessive but got the original Arabic version, two translated UAE birth certs and two Uk + passport. We keep one copy here and a second complete set in the Uk. Total bill was somewhere around 2,500AED for documentation if I remember rightly.