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JAMAICA MEDICAL FOUNDATION

23rd Annual General Meeting, July 29, 2010

IAJ Auditorium

Chairman’s Report For Year 2008/2009

INTRODUCTION

Colleagues of the Jamaica Medical Foundation, Mrs. Karen Bhorrasingh, Vice President–

IAJ, welcome. We are gathered here today after one of the most challenging years for

our organization. We started last year in the shadow of the greatest economic recession

the world has seen since the great depression of the 1920s. However, we are not an

organization to give in. we accepted the ‘deck” that we were dealt and sought to “play

our hand” in an environment which has forced everyone to adjust their expectations.

THE PROSTATE CANCER PROJECT

Our major focus during the year was to continue, more aggressively, to seek to raise $15

Million Dollars to finance the Prostate Cancer Research Project to which we committed

ourselves in collaboration with the Jamaica Urological Society. We had a series of

breakfast meetings with selected corporate entities and also with some government

funding agencies. The strategy was to outline our history and programme to these

potential donors who we believed had the capacity to assist us and were the right fit for

our cause. To cut a long story short, although many times we felt optimistic that we

would be able to achieve our target, we now have to admit, unashamedly, that we have

come up virtually empty handed even at the time of writing this Report. We have only

so far received a cheque of $250,000 from the Jamaica National Building Society. We

found that even normally generous companies admitted that, in the current business

environment, they were unable to give us funds, not only due to slow and uncertain

business but, also due to the difficulty they would have explaining to their staff, their

generosity to others while implementing proactive austerity measures at ‘home’.

Colleagues we have thus far failed.

PUBLIC EDUCATION

Although we fell short with respect to our fundraising, we sought to build awareness

about the need for Jamaican men to take their prostate health seriously. We

implemented a Prostate Cancer awareness seminar during Insurance Week 2009 at the

PCJ Auditorium and had a full house in attendance. Those who attended expressed their

gratitude for the vital information we provided them from a high- powered panel of

experts. The panel consisted of Dr. Trevor Tulloch, Urologist and President of the

Jamaica Urological Society, Dr. Maria Jackson who shared some breaking research on

nutrition and cancer and Mr. Earl Jarrett of the Jamaica Cancer Society who spoke on

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the role of the Society in promoting cancer awareness and the various services that it

provides. To add some realism to the seminar, Mr. Clive Chambers, a prostate cancer

survivor, spoke about his own experience dealing with the condition. There were

requests for us to do the seminar again from the many satisfied persons present.

DIASPORA OUTREACH

Recognising the limitations of the Jamaican economic environment, the Foundation

continued on its path to cultivate partners in the Diaspora. It will not be easy but, we

want to build our ‘market presence’ to the point where Jamaicans living abroad will see

us as a credible and worthy body to which to make charitable donations. In this respect,

we are working to build a relationship with the local Diaspora Office. We have initiated

relationships with the Canadian Diaspora, through Mr. Phillip Mascoll, their former

president, and Mr. Alan Jones, a Jamaican involved in the health industry and media.

Both gentlemen have pledged their support to assist us in building a relationship with

the Canadian Diaspora which would benefit the JMF and indeed Jamaica. Beyond these

connections, we have made contact with Dr. Andrew Loblaw, Head of the Department

of Urology at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, (the largest hospital in Canada) with a

view for them to collaborate with the JUS and UWI hospital on the Prostate Cancer

Project. These developments are evolving and we will update you as we progress.

WEBSITE

We finally got our website fully operational and it can be visited at

www.jamaicamedfoundation.com via the Jamaica Gleaner website, one of the most

well visited websites in Jamaica and the Diaspora. In due course, we will modify the site

to receive funds from persons wishing to contribute to whatever cause we are focusing

on at any time.

ALIGNMENT WITH IAJ

The JMF was set up in 1987 as the outreach of the life insurance industry under the

umbrella of the Life Insurance Companies Association of Jamaica (LICA). Since then,

however, the life insurance industry has merged with the Jamaica Association of General

Insurance Companies (JAGIG) to form the Insurance Association of Jamaica (IAJ). The

result of this is that your Board of Trustees sees the need for building a close

‘parent/child’ working relationship with the IAJ, similar to that which existed with the

former LICA. In pursuit of this, later today, we will be meeting with the IAJ President,

Mr. Paul Lalor, who is unable to join us but is ably represented by Vice President Mrs.

Karen Bhoorasingh. This realignment will necessitate some changes to our Constitution.

One of these will be to appoint IAJ executives to the new Board of Trustees. This could

be the start of a new kind of relationship with the industry for which we are the

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outreach arm. Our name will likely be changed and hence our identity. Our thinking is

that we must be prepared to accept change and its challenges and move on to a greater

and better tomorrow. We anticipate that we will bring the new Constitution for

ratification at the 2010 Annual General Meeting

FINANCE

Despite the difficult financial environment, the JMF boldly put on a fundraising banquet

in 2009 and attained a surplus of $352,285, up from $88,984 in 2008. The JMF, in 2008,

also earned $2.17 million in investment income as we benefitted from a favourable

interest rate regime. This represents a 16% increase over the previous year.

At the end of the financial year, total assets stood at $17.5 million, only 2.4% more than

the previous year end. This was due to a negative $1.97 Million in revaluation reserves

due to the diminution in the value of the equities held. As a body with a long term

horizon, however, we are not bothered unduly by this because, while the equity market

continues in a recessionary mode, (which means that stock prices are depressed), we

have been building up, on the cheap, our portfolio of stocks in the best dividend paying

companies on the exchange. This means that, when the economy ‘comes back’ and

stock prices rebound, the positive impact will show on our balance sheet. (We can take

some questions from any member who wishes to do so now)

Administrative expenses during the year were $820,173 up from $535,286 in the

previous year. This was due to (1) the expenses from special promotional meetings held

to woo corporate donors and (2) there was an increase in public relations expenses

reflecting the costs involved in staging the prostate cancer awareness seminar.

Donations were cut to only

$155,100 as we put the focus on building the Foundation’s capital base.

AS WE LOOK AHEAD

There are four major issues that will occupy our attention in the years ahead. You have

already heard of the Constitutional change to bring us in closer alignment with the IAJ.

The other three are:

1. The Foundation’s 25th anniversary in 2012

2. A possible trip to the Diaspora in 2011 to ‘test the waters’ and see if our

assumptions about getting financial contributions from it are correct, and

3. The question of the adequacy and relevance of a capital base of a mere $17.5m

in a sea of million dollar requests

The harsh reality is that $17.5m will not ‘cut it’ as the $15M request for the Prostate

Research Project has demonstrated

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CONCLUSION

Colleagues, and visitors, while we fell far short of our target of $15 Million dollars to

fund Prostate Cancer Research, we are aware that the period under review represents

an extraordinary time for the country and the world arising from the global financial

meltdown which many feel was orchestrated by greed in the American financial market.

The Canadian Diaspora, which we have been cultivating based on more up to date

information, is one that we hope will solidify in concrete results. This, however, is a

work in progress. The audited accounts indicated that we managed our financial affairs

prudently while maintaining a reasonable public presence.

Your Foundation recognises that, going ahead, it will have to multi-task to ensure that

we continue with our efforts to successfully pull off the Prostate Cancer Project while

preparing for new relationships. Despite the odds, it is my fervent belief that, with the

support from you all, we will overcome.

Thank you very much.