The kindness of the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) and its staff to tourism sector interests abroad has been reciprocated not in a rise in tourist bookings, but in a more heartfelt manner.

"We have such a wonderful association with the Jamaica Tourist Board in New York, specifically Marcia Sinclair, and they have done so much for us (Air Jamaica and JTB) that we wanted to return the kindness to the people of Jamaica that they showed our chapter," said Karen Byrnes, president of the Long Island Chapter of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) and president of her own Sea Breeze Travel Agency in Lindenhurst, New York.

Byrnes and her CTO team raised US$7,000 (J$546,978.56) from a fashion show to cover the US$5,000 (J$390,699.79) cost for 10-month-old Jamaican Marlon Johnson of St Catherine to undergo heart surgery at the Westchester Hospital in New York. Johnson needs to have a ventricular vessel defect corrected.

According to the website kidshealth.org, a ventricular septal defect (VSD), sometimes referred to as a hole in the heart, is the most common congenital heart defect and is a type of defect in which there is an abnormal opening in the dividing wall between the main pumping chambers of the heart (the ventricles).

In most cases, they are diagnosed and treated successfully with few or no complications, the website says.

Little Marlon will fly out tomorrow with his mother for surgery a few days later.

They will be met on arrival at the JFK by Gift of Life and CTO representatives and accommodated either by Gift of Life or by a member of the CTO.

Byrnes and Auer were in the island to attend a CTO retreat.

- Carl Gilchrist