UG’S MEDICAL SCHOOL

Oct 03, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Cuba is exporting medical personnel to other countries. Cuba has more than eleven thousand medical personnel, according to a report in Forbes magazine, working in Brazil alone.
It has thousands of doctors working in other countries with which Cuba has close relations.
Cuba has doctors and medical personnel working in Guyana. They have been doing so for over thirty years. Cuba has trained hundreds of Guyanese.
They have hundreds of eye operations on Guyanese, paid for by the Venezuelan government, under an arrangement entered into by the previous government.
Cuba once, when Hamilton Green was the Minister of Health, provided support to the then fledging medical school at the University of Guyana. Despite there being a local medical school, Cuba recognised the need for more doctors to be trained and the limited places available to train Guyanese students in Guyana and they therefore agreed to provide training for hundreds of Guyanese medical students.
Many of the persons in Guyana’s hospitals and health clinics are Cuban-trained. Many of them would not have become doctors had it not been for Cuba.
Many of them would not have been able to gain admission to the University of Guyana’s medical school because that school has a limited number of places. It can only accommodate a certain number of students and therefore many of those who went to Cuba were afforded an opportunity which they otherwise would not have had in their own country.
In Cuba, if you want to become a doctor and you are qualified, there are few impediments to you becoming a doctor. They have the facilities to train thousands of doctors simultaneously.
The country has for some years been undergoing hard times and so they have cut the number of scholarships they offer. There has also been some resistance in Guyana to sending Guyanese students to study in Cuba. There is a fear that if we have too many doctors, then doctors would not be able to earn as much.
There are many students in Guyana who want to become doctors but do not have the opportunities. The scholarships to Cuba are drying up and the medical school at the University of Guyana can only take in so many students.
Students in Guyana that meet the academic requirements for admission to UG’s medical school, find that they are unable to gain admission to the medical programme because it is oversubscribed. But why should that be?
Why should Guyana not be like Cuba and be able to train as many students as it can? Guyana should be expanding its medical programme at the University of Guyana.
It should be building laboratories and investing in more training of medical personnel. Instead, many students who apply are unable to gain admission and to fulfill their dream of becoming doctors.
Guyana should be like Cuba. We should be exporting doctors. Eight per cent of our university graduates eventually migrate. So there is nothing wrong with training doctors for exports.
When our workers go overseas to work, they send back money home. They return with money to purchase or build their own homes.
They bring back money to invest in businesses. Exporting skills is not a loss to the economy. It is a gain.
The University of Guyana should not be increasing tuition fees by $8,000. If the University of Guyana wants to increase fees it should be doing so in increments of $100,000.
It should be expanding the medical school so that more doctors can be trained locally. Even if jobs are not there for them in Guyana, they can find jobs elsewhere as Cuba is doing with its medical personnel working in over 77 countries in the world.

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UG’S MEDICAL SCHOOL

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