Four decades after migrating to the United States as a two-year-old Raj Ouellet has returned to Guyana at the urging of his mother. His mission, he says is to build a business base in Guyana which while anticipating returns on a planned US$25 million investment also seeks to make a mark on the local health sector.
Since February last year Ouellet has been in Guyana engaging public and private sector officials in the health sector and seeking to lay the foundation for a long-term investment. He is Chief Executive Officer of 7 OCEANZ Holdings Inc a company that appears to have decided that the Caribbean is now a new emerging market for the medical resources, both equipment and services, which the company seeks to sell.
One area in which the company’s Chief Executive Officer believes that it can provide support to regional and local medical facilities is through the supply of a “full range of state-of-the-art, affordable, diagnostic imaging equipment including portable, mobile x-ray machines, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) units to medical facilities, hospitals, imaging centres and clinics.”
The process of making meaningful inroads into the local market for high-end equipment and services has been a gradual one. Earlier this week, 7 OCEANZ announced that it had installed a new state-of-the-art x-ray system at the Fortbath Medical Clinic, West Coast Berbice.
According to the release the new x-ray machine will bring “enhanced care to patients of West Coast Berbice by providing local access to imaging procedures.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer is banking on the expectation that the difference to the quality of medical treatment and care which a single initiative in a small community will make; will create a broader realization among both state and private institutions that 7 OCEANZ can help transform the country’s health sector.
The company’s objectives, he says, are twofold. It seeks to upgrade the capacity of the local health sector to provide a wider range of medical services and procedures not hitherto offered in Guyana by supplying both modern equipment and, where necessary, skills with which to provide those services. He envisages that 7 OCEANZ will not only raise the profile of the country’s health sector but will, in many cases, significantly reduce the cost of medical procedures by cutting out patient travel costs and the customarily high cost of medical treatment in countries like the United States.
7 OCEANZ is also aiming to establish its own medical facility here in Guyana that will offer specialized medical and surgical treatment procedures for cancers and other diseases utilizing specialists who will be recruited from overseas to work on what Ouellet says will be an ultra-modern and appropriately equipped facility. Here, he envisages that opportunities will arise for local health workers, including nurses, to secure exposure to training not currently available at local health care institutions. “Of course it’s business for 7 OCEANZ but it’s also an opportunity for the advancement of the local health sector and that is what we are aiming at,” he says.
Raising awareness is part of the current phase of the 7 OCEANZ’s presence in Guyana. At the level of government he seeks to create a broader awareness of the nexus between a modern health sector and other critical aspects of the country’s development. His contention is that Guyana is likely to attract more aggressive investor interest if it can provide specialized and high-quality treatment for a range of ailments.
He says this is based on the experiences of other countries. At home, he believes that a more medically assured population will be better positioned to contribute to the country’s development.
Land for the erection of the proposed 7 OCEANZ facility has already been identified on the East Coast Demerara and according to the company’s Chief Executive Officer the facility could be completed in 18 months’ time. At the earliest stage the facility will offer medical procedures associated with the treatment of prostate cancer, primarily, a radiation-based procedure known as prostate seeding. “Prostate cancer is one of the leading killers among men in this part of the world. Some of the problems are associated with a reluctance to have the relevant medical examinations done. Part of our mission is to generate an education process that will provide a greater awareness of the importance of treating with this condition seriously; and of course 7 OCEANZ will be seeking to make access to treatment both more accessible and more affordable.”
Ouellet told Stabroek Business that he has already met Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran and various private medical practitioners to discuss possible collaboration with 7 OCEANZ. He is, he says, in no “rush” as far as the implementation of his business plan is concerned, feeling as he does a sense of comfort over being “at home”.
Information available on the company’s website indicates that its aim is to spread its services across the English-speaking Caribbean and parts of South America. As far as the hemisphere is concerned, however, the company’s objective is to establish ‘flagship headquarters’ in Guyana. The aim, he says, is to help transform external perceptions of the quality of medical services in the region while causing Guyana to be seen by the outside world as an important medical outpost for care and treatment that matches that which is available in developed countries. He wants the medical sector here to move to a level “where large numbers of foreigners will come to Guyana to have medical procedures done at a lower cost”.
In this regard he believes that the completion of the Guyana/Brazil road could create an additional significant market for patients from outside the country. “Frankly, it is as much an opportunity for Guyana as it is for 7 OCEANZ,” Ouellet says.
