FOSCAL

With health care costs spiraling here, there and everywhere, a local health clinic is offering an alternative that’s cheaper – and abroad.

La Clinic Du Corps (LCDC) – meaning The Body Clinic – has entered into arrangements with a Colombia-based medical facility that’s offering a whole range of services in one all-inclusive package, including return flight, accommodation, examinations and care, including surgery.

It’s easy to assume that travelling abroad for top-class medical care would be at least more costly than being cared for locally, but that’s not the case, as has already been experienced by some St. Lucians, much to their better health and satisfaction.

Harris Dalsan of Upper Bagatelle is one such St. Lucian who’s tasted the cheaper but better Colombian experience.

He recounted his experience to The Voice.

“I had a serious heart problem and for several months during last year, I couldn’t get anything done about it here. I checked different doctors and different clinics, but nothing doing,” said Dalsan.

He continued, “Earlier this year, a friend sent me to La Clinic Du Corps and they told me they could not help me with my heart problem, but they could put me on to a hospital in Colombia that could do it.

“I told them I might not be able to pay all that money, but they told me it will be affordable, so I asked them to check the cost for me. They called me earlier this year and from that time, when I heard the cost, I already started to feel better.”

Dalsan flew to Colombia’s Ophthalmological Foundation of Santander’s Carlos Adila-Lule (FOSCAL) institute, which started off as an eye centre in 1976 and by 1979 expanded into various other medical services, including cancer and neurological services.

The centre where Dalsan was attended to was built in 1993 and is now one of Colombia’s leading exponents of health care, providing medical services to citizens of other countries through arrangements as with St. Lucia’s LCDC.

“I got this chance and I took it,” says Dalsan, who flew to Columbia at the end of April via Trinidad and Panama.

“There was someone waiting to pick me up at the airport to take me to the clinic and from the time I got there they started to work on me,” said Dalsan, who returned home before the end of the first week of May.

“I only spent from May 8^th to May 14^th, but it was an unforgettable experience. It was as if the persons taking care of me wanted me to know that their priority was to make me well,” he said.

“They did all they could to make me get well because they saw me as an ambassador who would go back and tell St. Lucians how good my experience was.

“They took care of everything, every day. I felt like a real patient being taken care of by real doctors and nurses who cared about me and my health,” said Dalsan.

Dalsan said he decided to tell his story to The Voice “because I want the whole of St. Lucia to know that there is an alternative to the high prices we normally have to pay for good medical care.”

“I am not putting down our local doctors and hospitals and nurses, but what I got in Columbia, for the price I got it, is something I want people here who cannot afford the high costs to know about so that they can explore it too, if they want to,” he added.

“I know that people go to Martinique, Barbados, Canada, the USA, Venezuela and even Puerto Rico to get good or better care, even if is for more money. But in my case, I got what I consider to be better care for less money than I would have had to pay here and I am happy about that,” he affirmed.

Asked for a comment, LCDC Medical Travel Coordinator, Abraham Louisy, said, “I am very happy to have worked out that arrangement for Mr. Dalsan, and any other St. Lucians who wants to share his experience and learn more abut it can contact him, as he’s the best person to tell his story.

“I have simply done what I always do: help patients in need of alternative medical care,” he added.