Seven doctors pursue US-backed Residency programme

Jan 20, 2013 News

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By Abena Rockcliffe
As efforts are made to advance postgraduate medical education to meet national needs for specialist care and research, and as a mean to tackle migration of doctors, the University of Maryland, the University of Guyana, Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), and the Ministry of Health have introduced a Masters degree in Internal Medicine/ infectious diseases.
United States Ambassador, Brent Hardt, has dubbed the programme “vitally important” as he noted that the collaboration has been in the making for some time. At the official launch of the programme yesterday at GPHC, Hardt said that it’s a delight that “the hard work of all the partners has come to fruition.”
The Ambassador told a gathering of  medical professionals that the programme has been developed so that “we can work more effectively together in addressing the challenges posed in combating HIV and AIDS and Infectious Disease more broadly.”
He noted that before 1985, training of medical doctors for Guyana’s health care system was conducted exclusively through scholarship arrangements between the Government of Guyana and countries and universities in the Caribbean, Europe, and North America.
Guyana established its first local medical school in 1985, within the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Guyana. Ever since clinical rotations for interns and UG medical students have been done at Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation under the supervision of GPHC clinical mentors.
Ambassador Hardt said that approximately 25 medical doctors graduate each year from UG’s medical school, with the majority, unfortunately, migrating within the first three years of graduation. Guyana also has few local specialist doctors because post-graduate training for doctors traditionally occurs overseas.
Many of these doctors ultimately seek employment outside of Guyana upon completion of their postgraduate studies.
The Residency Programme, he noted, will support the development of the Internal Medicine/Infectious Diseases curriculum. It will also offer revisions to the infectious disease components of the undergraduate curriculum for medical students, including the most current information and best practices on HIV, AIDS, TB, and other infectious diseases.
The programme will train UG faculty in advanced HIV and Infectious Diseases and appropriate teaching methodologies. Residents in Internal Medicine will receive training and mentoring with a strong focus on HIV and Infectious Disease, including best practices in management of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases and oportunistic infections associated with HIV. University of Maryland Infectious Diseases Faculty based in Guyana will supervise the Residents.
The Residency programme will provide for the renovation and enhancement of the laboratory at the University of Guyana for use by the residents, medical students, and other students of the Faculty of Health Sciences for laboratory practicum in infectious diseases, Ambassador Hardt said.
The programme will provide continuous technical assistance to the Guyana Ministry of Health on infectious disease guidelines and management. Lastly, the University of Maryland will conduct an assessment of continuing education training in infectious diseases for physicians in Guyana.
A GPHC official told Kaieteur News that the programme follows on the development of postgraduate education at GPHC in affiliation with the University of Guyana which was initiated in 2006.
The programme is accredited by the University of Guyana and is a three-year programme, with a first intake of seven residents namely Dr. Haimchand Barran, Dr. Terrence Haynes, Dr. Ramdeo Jainarine, Dr. Kumarie Jaipersaud, Dr. Kishore Ramdass, Dr. Kamela Bemaul-Sukh, and Dr. Grace Waldron-White.
There will be a continuous presence of faculty from Maryland at GPHC, supported by local faculty for the conduct of the programme. The project’s sustainability will be reinforced through the creation of a detailed strategy for fully transitioning the program to the IHSE and University of Guyana Faculty of Health Sciences at the end of the five-year grant.
“This is a major development in our efforts to advance postgraduate medical education to meet our national needs for specialist care and research.
“With a significant proportion of our disease burden being due to infectious diseases and the chronic non-communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes such a programme was long overdue” said Dr. Madan Rambaran, founder and director of the Institute of Health Science Education at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Bheri Ramsaran, Minister of Health congratulated his team of medical professionals “who have been working hard to make the programme possible.” He pledged that more initiatives of this sort will be coming out of the Ministry of Health and its affiliated organizations. He noted that his Ministry will continue to get support
Dr Ramsaran noted that his Ministry is working on having the same health care services offered on the cost land be made available to those in the interior locations.
He said that without the human resources that task is impossible. “Hospitals and machines don’t provide health care, doctors do.”
Grace Waldron-White, a doctor who re-migrated as a result of the programme, expressed thanks on behalf of her and colleagues to the Ministry of Health for its “steadfast and robust” commitment to health care.

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