Fertility Clinic Encourages Further Medical Tourism Thrust

The Medical Fertility Centre (BFC) has been the island's leading proponent of medical tourism for the past 15 years, annually attracting hundreds of visitors from the United States, United Kingdom and the Caribbean. The Eastern Caribbean's lone internationally accredited fertility facility has put Barbados on the map, and is now helping more Barbadians and non nationals alike to have families.

The centre provides egg and embryo freezing, sperm injection, ovulation induction, and intra-uterine insemination. Patients not only receive internationally recognised and accredited treatment, but also spend holidays in Barbados while seeing professionals at the BFC as part of a special package deal.

Medical tourism is one of the areas of Barbados' services economy that needs to be paid some serious attention. That's the view of Dr. Juliet Skinner and Anna Hosford, co-founders of the Barbados Fertility Centre. They want to see other health-care stakeholders jump on the medical tourism bandwagon as well, and engage in cluster marketing, which would allow the country to better advertise itself as a provider of varied medical care to persons also wishing to travel to a holiday destination.

"The fringe tourism markets can only improve, and it's them that can help protect the ones which are under threat," Skinner, the centre's consultant gynaecologist, told the SUNDAY Sun in a recent interview.

She believes medical tourism remains the reason the centre's doors have remained open over the years, and other medical departments need to follow suit.

"Without medical tourism, it would not have been financially feasible to have an IVF facility," Skinner admits. "People thought this would have taken away from local tourism, but it's the opposite. It adds to it."

Hosford said that Barbados' reputation as an island paradise was at the forefront of the country becoming a medical tourism leader.

"Barbados sells itself," the Irish clinic director said. "The island is so attractive, and then if you can provide that...