A medical professor involved in a project to create the Eastern Caribbean’s first cancer treatment centre is facing allegations of financial mismanagement, according to international media reports.
Arthur T. Porter, a Sierre Leonean oncology professor, serves as chairman of the board of directors for the Cancer Centre of the Eastern Caribbean, a $5 million project that broke ground in Antigua last year but has since stalled.
The initiative is a joint endeavour between the Antigua and Barbuda government and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.
According to the Antigua Observer newspaper, Mr. Porter is under scrutiny for his role in managing the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Canada.
Over a seven-year period, the facility’s $12 million debt “ballooned to $115 million – a financial state so precarious that the hospital network has been assigned a special overseer to monitor its spending,” the newspaper reported.
Corruption investigators in Quebec are looking into allegations fraud and fiscal mismanagement at the hospital, the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported. Mr. Porter has denied the allegations, and he announced to the Montreal Tribune Saturday that he recently diagnosed himself with a small malignant tumour, the newspaper reported.
“In November, police charged two former executives at SNC-Lavalin, the engineering firm that was awarded the contract during Dr. Porter’s tenure, with multiple criminal charges, including fraud and using falsified documents,” the newspaper reported.
Caribbean facility
The Antigua cancer centre is designed as a private-public partnership between the OECS, the Antigua government, MEI Healthcare Partners and Global Health Partners, Ltd.
Besides Antigua, the facility is to be open to all members of the OECS member states, including the Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The centre is to offer several types of radiation therapy and will be built at the Mount St. John Centre property, according to Antigua’s Government Information Services.
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