‘Move centre of economy from goods sector to people sector’

THERE ARE 48 hospitals across the country today, compared with 33 hospitals in Jamaica in 2003, Jarrett pointed out. Despite that expansion in service provision, he indicated that there is clearly room for significant growth.

“We need to attract the appropriate capital to create the space in which surgeons like yourselves can practise,” he told the ASJ members. “We need to find a way in which investment capital that is available elsewhere comes into this country to support building those institutions.”

The Customs Act was changed in 2003, enabling some medical equipment to enter the country duty free, he stated. “We need to go further than that. We need to recognise that these are tools of the trade in the services sector. They are not luxuries to be taxed heavily.”

Referring to the Health City Cayman Islands medical facility, founded by heart surgeon Dr Devi Shetty, Jarrett said, “He had a vision to make health care accessible to everyone.”

The institution has served 25,000 patients in The Cayman Islands and across the region since it began operating in 2014, Jarrett said. Its success was based on support from two political administrations in Cayman providing the necessary incentives, along with support from doctors and nurses from India.

“In comparison with Cayman, Jamaica ended up as a country with high barriers to many things, including people involved in the business of medicine,” Jarrett said. “The fact is that it is difficult to get a work permit for outsiders to come here.”

To reproduce the success of Health City Cayman Islands in Jamaica, “We will need to accept that the economy has changed,” Jarrett stated. “We must move the centre of the economy from the goods sector to the people sector and sell the services of our people globally. We must embrace technology and computing and see medicine as an economic driver.”

Jarrett also urged the ASJ to reach out to surgeons of Jamaican heritage who live overseas. He suggested that they should, “see the ASJ not as a network of surgeons in Jamaica, but a network of surgeons across the world”.