Dominica-China Friendship Hospital offers free medical care for youth, says PM Skerrit
There is so much the Dominica-China Friendship Hospital has to offer, the prime minister of Dominica said.
In recent press conference, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit shared a number of “high-class and modern services” offered at the premier hospital, including the free medical care offered to patients 16-18 years old.
“There’s a policy in place in the Dominica government that people who are within the age of 16 to 18 would be provided with free medical care,” Skerrit said, adding that the policy won’t change until the administration decides to.
He reiterated that this conforms with the international requirements, ensuring that “every citizen has access to medical care irrespective of their economic circumstances.”
In December last year, at the launch event of Melissa Poponne Skerrit for Roseau Central Constituency, Skerrit emphasized that the Dominica-China Friendship Hospital is now capable of offering cancer treatments that used to be inaccessible in the small island nation.
“I was told that Director of PAHO (Pan American Health Organization), Dr. Carissa Etienne, spoke highly of the project. She said these are world class services, some of which are not available in the OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) and even the wider Caribbean in terms of the public health sector,” H.E. XianJiang Lin, Chinese ambassador to Dominica, said in a previous interview.
Skerrit also stated that “the government had introduced diagnostic tests in the hospital at Portsmouth constituency of Dominica,” and the intensive care unit (ICU) had been introduced but was not fully embraced locally.
The press conference answered questions from the public about why certain individuals continue to seek medical care abroad, in spite of the services already made available at the Dominica-China Friendship Hospital.
Skerrit lamented that the awareness about the hospital’s capability as a state-of-the-art medical institution on the island is inadequate, and said “his original plan for the hospital has not been fully implemented.”
Part of Dominica’s plans in becoming the world’s first climate-resilient nation is constructing more state-of-the-art healthcare institutions and facilities throughout the island.
Through the help of its Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme, Dominica has been able to build clinics in collaboration with MMC Development Ltd., a Dubai-based firm that has been instrumental to the housing initiative of the government of Dominica
MMC Development Ltd. is also the developer behind the New Marigot Hospital now in operations, with medical equipment and furnishings already in place.