There has been a considerably large donation of US$30,000 towards the purchase of a brand new 540 CT Scan Machine for the Princess Alexandra Hospital from twinned insurance companies in Anguilla.
“Let me say thank you on behalf of the Government and people of Anguilla to MAICO (Malliouhana-Anico Insurance Company Limited) and the Eastern Caribbean Reinsurance Company (ECRC) Limited for a very sizeable contribution,” Anguilla’s Minister of Social Development and Health, Mr. Evans McNiel Rogers, said.” He was speaking on Tuesday, March 15, while receiving a cheque for the above amount from MAICO’s Manager, Ms Monica Hodge.
The grateful Minister continued: “There is no secret that I have pledged this five-year term towards improving the health services in Anguilla. It isn’t by accident that, as we speak, I have the Architect, Engineer Designer for Health City Cayman in the room as my guest. That goes to show that the Government is serious about improving not only the physical infrastructure of our healthcare facilities in Anguilla, but also the human resources capacity as well. This is just one in a series of steps towards improving healthcare in Anguilla. I am sure that when we finalise the model and the design for the new medical complex other letters and emails will be flying around in terms of contributions for improving healthcare.”
Mr. Fabian Marcel Fahie, speaking on behalf of the insurance companies, stated: “We pride ourselves on our corporate contributions to our community. We highly regard the fact that we exist because of our customers who come from the entire community. We are in the business of risk management and we know that health is an area about which companies like us are very concerned. It was therefore an easy decision for us to contribute to this effort by the Minister. We are happy that our overall financial situation permitted us to do it. We feel that for the size of our two organisations, I think that we have done wonderfully well in terms of the level of contribution we have made. If you base our contribution on revenue turnover, it is bigger than that of some of those entities that have given much bigger amounts but, proportionately to revenue, our contribution is bigger and so we are very happy.”
MAICO, a fully-local enterprise, is a minority shareholder in the Eastern Caribbean Reinsurance Company which is also based in Anguilla. ECRC was started by TDC Group of Companies in St. Kitts. “TDC is also a shareholder in MAICO and this speaks to the whole idea of the sub-regional economic integration within the OECS,” Mr. Fahie added.
A number of other entities in Anguilla have also made sizeable contributions towards the purchasing of the CT Scan Machine. They are ANGLEC, Social Security, NAGICO, and some other private partners. “At the moment, we are just over the US$300,000 mark, and I have no doubt that we will raise the balance in short order from other local partners,” Minister Rogers told The Anguillian newspaper.
