With great disappointment i would like to narrate our experience with Aster Medical center (al rafa), Dubai, Mankhool with respect to our first delivery of our Baby Boy. My wife conceived in the month of May (last menstrual period - May 18th) and had part of her consultation done in India/saudi and since i had relocated to dubai on August 22nd as part of my joining a new company she also flew down to dubai on November . We did try to get registered into AL-Wasel but they denied to take the case as she had already entered her 7th month of pregnancy.We decided to choose Aster as it had good reviews from people around for Dr. Saleena and Dr. Mini Ravi. Since they had left we decided to try out a new doctor (Dr. Anjana Kaul). We met Dr. Rajee in December and asked her what plan do we have to enroll and since we had just 2 more months of consultation till delivery we were requested not to take any packages and have regular consultations. Every visit to Dr. Anjana was pleasant and she always assured us everything is fine. Suddenly when we had met the doctor on 15th February we were asked to do a vaginal swab test and later on they had found an infection but nothing was so major and life threatening and our delivery date was fixed for 25th February. On 20th doctor suggested lets go for an induction of labour on 22nd as she was out of office on 25th(delivery date) . When we had gone for the induction of labor well in advance from the actual expected delivery date (25th) as per her opinion we thought the doctor was right and never questioned as this was our first baby and we dint know much(especially me) about the whole delivery process. After induction of pain in the morning on 22nd my wife had to suffer the pain of her life for more close to 13 hours and ended up in a C-section as the doctor informed us failure to progress.
I felt really bad of the fact that we were not properly informed about the risks of induction of labour and complications and my wife had to go thru Hell of a time.
I came to know that the doctor had a conference in Oman on 25th, hence she had requested to pre-pone the delivery date and suggested induction of labour.This disappointed me and i prompted myself to educate myself and ask her all kinds of questions related to induction of labour for which she did give some high level reasons for the same which was not at all convincing enough.
I also had to pay 16, 000 dirhams for c-section, baby care and medicines. And the consultation fee and lab tests amounted to 3000 when there package was only 2500 and we were made to do the same tests that were in the package but had to pay more since we hadn't opted for the package.
I had talked to Dr. Manjula about the variations in the package and the higher amount that i incurred as per Dr. Rajee's suggestion which only went into deaf ears as they do not have a policy to reimburse on Bills already paid..
Aster should change their tagline as "Aster is big on Care and big on Money"
But last but not the least the team of nurses were really good to us thru out our term with Aster, which is the only good experience that we had with Aster (al rafa)maternity medical center.

The worst part is that they had a total of five c-sections done during the time we were there and also the bed next to my wife's was also a lady who had gone thru a C-section at the last minute during her labour as Dr. Sejal had requested them to get into an immediate C-section due to decrease in the heartbeat of the baby possibly due to the cord being stuck around the baby's neck.

I would not recommend Aster Hospital to anyone in dubai due to the bad experiences above.