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Government recently signed a $390 million agreement with a Chinese consortium to expand the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH). It will include a new oncology facility, a burns unit, new laboratory, additional outpatient space, a helipad, staff gym, day care and administrative offices. A bridge will also be constructed across Martindale’s Road to the old Enmore Clinic where the expansion is taking place. Minister of Health The Most Honourable Senator Dr Jerome Walcott, and Minister in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Ryan Straughn, signed the agreement along with Jiao Cui of China Sinopharm Int. Corp, and Dong Sheng Li and Kai Shi from China Railway (Caribbean) Construction Ltd. Walcott explained that the process began with an “unsolicited proposal” in 2023 from the Chinese consortium. “We thought best practice required that we go through the procurement and in spite of that, we did a request for information. This was in February last year. Out of that came two expressions of interest from the consortium and another company, I believe it was out of Canada, and thereafter we did a request for proposals.” He said a number of entities did not complete the process while the Chinese consortium partially completed but did not finish in time. “We subsequently sought and obtained from, through the procurement department and through the director of finance, [the] consent to pursue a single-source procurement and we then thereafter entered into negotiations with this consortium.” Straughn said it was a deferred payment agreement and while it will be for BDS$390 million, “we are borrowing in Chinese currency at an interest rate of 3.5 per cent over 11 years, which in the current circumstance, represents the best concessional financing that the Government of Barbados could have received, given the mandate with respect to the expansion and the urgency that is there”. In terms of the facilities, Walcott pointed out that the QEH comprised about 50 000 square metresand the expansion would provide another 19 320, an increase of about 40 per cent. “It is expected that this construction will comprise of two towers linked to the present building by a bridge over Martindale’s Road. So there’ll be a bridge over the road linking to the first block which would be one that will comprise of the lab, the additional wards, the burns unit, the outpatient department. The other building, which should be just across Enmore, would be the oncology centre and the administrative block which will house IT (information technology) and so on,” he stated. He said the oncology department will be state-of-the-art with another linear accelerator machinefor cancer treatment, while there will be provision for brachytherapy, a gamma CT facility, PET gamma and the cyclotron. “So you’re taking oncology to a different level in Barbados,” Walcott said, adding that these will all be available in that facility. He said the burns unit was necessary given the push towards electrical vehicles which were known to have issues related to spontaneous combustion. “So this is like planning ahead that we will have a burns unit, of course recognising how expensive it is to treat persons who’ve had major burns and that we normally have to ship, transfer them overseas at quite expensive rates. Obviously, there is need for more outpatient space and in one of these buildings there would be provision for additional outpatient space.” The Senior Minister pointed out that the new laboratory, which will replace the old lab which was the focus of recurrent issues and environmental problems, will also be state-of-the-art. The estimated time for construction is 42 months and there will be a 60/40 Barbados to Chinese ratio of workers involved. Asked about the medical facility at Harrison Point and the possibility of its inclusion in the health care process, he said access to health care needed to be centralised and that the facility had already been leased. Straughn stressed that the expenditures to undertake such were critical “with respect to how we see our future”. While anticipating a smooth execution of the works, he stated: “I want to give the country the assurance that we have looked at our debt profile. We have prioritised within that debt profile these loans to be able to deliver better health care for citizens and therefore rest assured that the rates that we’ve been able to borrow at are more than sustainable.”
