aFashion blogger Thee Allure didn’t like the way her body looked after giving birth to her two children. “I didn’t look the same. It wasn’t me,” she said. Caribbean Beat During our Zoom interview, she felt like she knew where to turn: Plastic surgeons in the Dominican Republic (DR) have almost legendary reputations.
“I think DR is number one,” said Zee, 27, of Atlanta. “No one can take their spot. They’re the best.”
So in July 2021, she flew to Santo Domingo with her mother and young children for what was called a “surgery vacation,” documenting the experience in a series of videos posted to YouTube. In a video update six months later, she showed off the results of her abdominoplasty, liposuction, and Brazilian butt lift (BBL).
She listed the various expenses for the 18-day trip in US dollars: airfare ($1,800), lodging ($1,450), nurses ($810), driver ($250), chef services ($90), massages ($180), a pre-order package of post-op essentials like gauze and gloves ($300), and the surgery itself ($6,000).
While in the Dominican Republic, she also got her eyebrows microbladed ($142), lips plumped ($400), and teeth veneers ($2,500) — and that’s not including the cost of shopping and going to various restaurants.
Zee Allure is one example of why a destination may attract medical tourists: Medical tourists consume more products and services than other tourists, and therefore spend more money.
Of the Caribbean countries, the Dominican Republic has been the most successful in attracting medical tourists, receiving millions of visitors each year, mostly for cosmetic surgery, many of whom document their experiences, good and bad, on social media.
TThe Dominican Republic is one of two Caribbean Community countries featured in the Medical Tourism Index (MTI), a guide created by the US non-profit International Health Research Center (IHRC) based on Americans’ perceptions of travel destinations. The 2020-2021 MTI ranks the Dominican Republic 19th out of 46 countries. Jamaica, ranked 40th, has been trying to improve its medical tourism prospects for decades.
During a 2021 webinar, Diane Edwards, then-president of the Jamaica Promotion Corporation (JAMPRO), the government agency responsible for supporting investment and the industry in Jamaica, said the medical tourism policy had been drafted after four years of consultations with government and private stakeholders. A formal policy has yet to be presented.
“The most consistent story is that despite high expectations from governments, the health sector is actually not developing,” said Dr. Valorie Crooks, a health geographer at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Caribbean BeatCrookes’ book, Medical Tourism in the Caribbeanis scheduled to be released next year.
Dr. Jan Hochtritt, a plastic surgeon who runs the ProSurgiCare clinic in Kingston and was one of the participants in the JAMPRO webinar, believes Jamaica could benefit from more cosmetic surgery patients.
Zee Allure is an example of why destinations attract medical tourists: they consume more products and services and therefore spend more money than other tourists.
“I once had a Jamaican person come to me about complications after she went to the Dominican Republic to have surgery. I asked her about the implants and she didn’t know she had them in the Dominican Republic,” Hochtritt said. Jamaica Observer “We had a problem earlier this year in Jamaica where doctors don’t speak much English and some Jamaicans don’t speak much Spanish. That can cause problems.”
“Medical tourism can contribute greatly to the Jamaican economy and I believe that by promoting this sector, the island will thrive,” said Hochtrit, who explained during the webinar that 40 percent of patients come from overseas, and of those, about 95 percent are Jamaican immigrants – that is, Jamaicans or their descendants living overseas.
This is in line with a 2018 PricewaterhouseCoopers report on JAMPRO, aimed at developing medical tourism in Jamaica, which surveyed 27 private surgical clinics and found that 20-30% of their income was derived from foreigners, most of whom (56%) were Jamaican immigrants, while the rest were tourists from other Caribbean countries and other countries.
In a podcast interview last year, Crooks defined medical tourism as medical care that visitors intentionally seek, as distinct from emergency care, and spoke about the importance of the internet in promoting destinations, with social media in particular playing a major role in the Dominican Republic’s popularity.
“There are lots of networks among people considering going abroad, including chat rooms, discussion boards and websites where patients talk about their experiences,” Crooks says, “so they can build a reputation for certain destinations.”
aAnother challenge facing medical tourism in the Caribbean is the limited number of medical facilities accredited by top international organizations – an important consideration as the IHRC Medical Tourism Patient Survey found that over 63% of patients said accreditation influences their choice of medical provider.
One of the most highly regarded international accreditation bodies is Joint Commission International (JCI), based in the U.S. Only three of CARICOM providers are JCI accredited, while the others are seeking accreditation from other organizations.
“The problem is that our local accreditation processes may not be fully aligned with the JCI accreditation processes,” Dr. Ernest Madu, a cardiologist who founded the non-accredited but well-regarded Heart Institute of the Caribbean in Kingston, explained during a JAMPRO webinar. “If we don’t align those processes with international standards, we won’t get international accreditation. And if we don’t get international accreditation, patients will stop coming in droves.”
Madu went on to explain that the set of requirements for healthcare providers to become certified are the same ones that improve patient outcomes and inspire confidence in future clients. He stressed that all the available data and research backs this up.
Many providers share Madu’s view on the value of certification, with fertility treatment providers being a prime example: The Trinidad and Tobago IVF & Fertility Centre, which has two locations in Trinidad, is accredited by Germany-based Trust Effective Medicine, Optimised Services (TEMOS).
Services like IVF and egg freezing are much cheaper in the Caribbean than in the United States or the European Union. Wait times for appointments are often much shorter, and the fact that these clinics are located on tropical islands is another reason people seek medical care in the Caribbean, making their medical treatment feel like they’re on vacation.
Gee believes that the social media community can reduce the negative outcomes of any medical procedure or treatment. She brought her mother along to help care for her two young children. Perhaps most importantly, she had been preparing for this for quite some time – six months to be exact.
“Don’t decide to have your surgery and then leave the hospital two months later,” she says. “Be prepared. You’ll need more time to buy the things you need. [blood] “You need to take your iron. And you need to be mentally prepared.”
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