JAMPRO woos US investors to promote medical tourism to Jamaica

US investors are the latest targets for a Jamaica government seeking to attract medical tourists.Jamaica’s trade and investment promotion arm Jamaica Promotions Corporation (Jampro) has been hosting two business forums that promote Jamaica as a destination for medical tourism investments, business partnerships and dental tourism.

The Do Business Jamaica forum on medical tourism in Washington, D.C and Atlanta, Georgia, promoted business opportunities within Jamaica’s medical tourism industry, which the government of Jamaica has targeted as a key driver of economic growth.

Jampro’s strategy is to promote overseas investment into Jamaica’s slowly growing medical tourism sector as neither the government nor local businesses have the funds to develop or improve local hospitals and clinics.

The agency has attracted $15 million of investments. Spanish group Hospiten has a small new 22-bed private hospital – Hospiten Montego Bay. The other is the GWest Centre, also in Montego Bay- a business centre that includes an outpatient surgery, an urgent care centre, an inpatient unit and a radiology unit. The plan is to attract doctors from Jamaica, the Caribbean and North America to offer North Coast residents, tourists and medical tourists a range of medical services. Many units are still empty and the local promoters are vague as to whether or not any medical units are actually open.

Jamaica only gets a few hundred medical tourists, mostly from local islands but seeks to attract members of the diaspora living in the USA with low price dental, diagnostic and non-invasive services.

Diane Edwards of Jampro says, “We seek to attract medical tourism investment as medical tourists spend 10 times the average tourist and are usually accompanied by a family member.“