Dr. Devi Shetty told BBC this week the potential future success of his medical tourism project in Grand Cayman will be a blueprint for his plans to build a hospital chain in Africa.
“We want to start the first project there [in Cayman] to convince everyone that it is doable and, hopefully, God willing, everything works out fine, then roll out a larger hospital chain in Africa,” Dr. Shetty told HardTalk interviewer Stephen Sackur in a programme aired Monday, 9 January.
In building the Narayana Cayman University Medical Centre in the Cayman Islands, Dr. Shetty said: “We would like to show the most influential country in the world, that is America, that just outside their waters, you can build a hospital and offer healthcare at less than half of what they pay in the US.”
However, echoing comments he made at a news briefing in Grand Cayman last week, he said his primary target would not be American patients, but mostly people in the Caribbean region and Latin America.
At that briefing, he told reporters that he was working with “strategic partners” in the United States.
He told Mr. Sackur that there were partners in America who were willing to work with his project in Cayman. Without naming who these partners were, he said: “The people who are going to partner with us are running a very prestigious, not-for-profit hospital chains.”
Dr. Shetty insisted his motive behind the Cayman project was not to make a profit, but to prove that cheaper healthcare could be made available.
He said there was something “seriously wrong” with the way healthcare was provided in the UK, US and Asia.
“This is a disaster waiting to happen,” he said, adding that while the affordability of healthcare was the hot topic at the moment, the shortage of doctors, nurses and medical technicians was a major problem.
Last week, Dr. Shetty and his team announced plans to launch a medical school in Cayman, saying there was a shortage of between three and four million medical personnel worldwide.
Dr. Shetty plans to break ground on his proposed 2,000-bed hospital in August this year and to begin accepting patients a year later. The first phase of the project involves the creation of a 140-bed hospital.
Related Videos
