Indian Cardiologist Dr. Devi Shetty, the main partner behind the planned Health City Cayman Islands, last November offered 100 free heart surgeries to patients in the Cayman Islands, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Anyone who wants additional information about the heart surgery offer should call (345) 769-2273 (Cayman Islands) or check Health City Cayman Islands website at www.healthcitycaymanislands.com.
Dr. Shetty says one out of 140 children worldwide is born with heart defects. It is believed that 23,000 people in the Caribbean need to undergo heart surgery every year, but less than 1,000 actually undergo the operation.
The Health City Cayman Islands is approximately 10-months away from the first heart surgery. The first phase of the medical complex includes a 140-bed hospital which is scheduled to begin operation in early 2014.
Dr. Devi Shetty's offer of the free operations, to be carried out at his hospital in Bangalore, India, was open to mainly children, but also mothers of young children and the breadwinners in families.
The donation of the surgeries includes the operation, meals and accommodation for a patient and one relative. The offer does not include the cost of the flight to India. The patient and family member would be met at the India airport and assisted through the process leading up to the surgery, during and after the surgery.
Dr. Shetty announced the donations at a press conference on 30, November 2012 in the Cayman Islands, where he gave an update about the medical tourism project.
Some significant inroads are being made throughout the Caribbean. Besides the aforementioned free offer of heart surgeries and the potential for medical tourism which is becoming a reality throughout the Caribbean Basin, Trinidad and Tobago is currently the only Caribbean country that has the appropriate legislation that allows transplants to be performed and the only Caribbean country performing the same in a structured manner.
Trinidad & Tobago's National Organ Transplant Unit was established in January 2006 with a mandate to facilitate the safe and equitable transplantation of organs and tissue to patients living with organ failure in accordance with internationally acceptable standards.
Last month Cayman Islands legislators passed legislation legalizing kidney and other organ donations and transplants. The new law will, for the first time, allow the removal and implantation of organs and tissue from living or dead people to a patient in need of an organ or tissue.
In the Cayman Islands all patients waiting for a heart or kidney or liver transplant have to travel off island to have a transplant, even if the donor is a family member living on the island, and even if there is a surgeon willing to carry out the surgery, but the new law changes that.
The Trinidad & Tobago organ transplant unit/legislation and Cayman Island's recent passage of organ transplant legislation points out that parliaments within the region need to be pro-active with respect to legislation that will be needed to facilitate the quality of life in the interests of the people and the country that they serve.
Roddy Heyliger
