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Six new female doctors graduate from Guyana American University
The Guyana American University (GAU) held its Commencement/Graduation Ceremony at the Georgetown Marriott last Saturday evening. Guest speaker was former President Samuel A. Hinds.
Graduating Class (In front: Former PM, Samuel Hinds, Dean of GAU, Dr. Haydock Wilson and other participants. Graduates in the front row)
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Co-founder and President, Dr. Melissa Varswyk, commended the graduates for their hard work and dedication. She extolled the contributions made by GAU to the education sector in Guyana.
This graduation was a great day for Linden and for women. All of the seven graduates present were women – six of them from Linden; the other from Nigeria.
An eighth graduate, a man from Nigeria, could not have been present.
Amongst family and friends and other well-wishers were former Region Ten Chairman, Sharma Solomon and former Region Ten Member of Parliament Vanessa Kissoon.
Dr. Oneika Gill, Clinical Director of GAU, had proudly told Mr. Hinds that she was a girl from Silvertown, Wismar.
Mr. Hinds congratulated and commended GAU and the graduates. He thanked them for the invitation to address them.
Former PM, Samuel Hinds, Sharma Solomon, CEO of GAU, Dr. Melissa Varswyk and Vanessa Kissoon.
The GAU in Guyana was founded in November 2013 by Dr. Melissa Varswyck and Mr. Cyril (Maxi) Fox. Mr. Hinds recalled meetings in his office, with Mr. Sam London. These meetings led up to the founding of GAU, one of a number of ventures by Afro-Guyanese.
Mr. Hinds recalled that when a site was being sought in the Caribbean during the early 1970s for an off-shore American University, now St. George’s University in Grenada, most the recently colonial Guyana and throughout the Caribbean found the idea preposterous; as preposterous as the ideas were at the time for the establishment of the University of Guyana in 1963, by the PPP. St. George’s is today a great university which GAU can emulate and compete, Mr. Hinds said. Most Guyanese are still not sure about off-shore Universities such as GAU but education and training, studying and researching are an increasingly large element of peoples’ lives and of economic activities in societies.
He lamented the non-fruition of the tertiary level hospital, which the PPP had planned. He hoped that it would still be established and the many positive opportunities realised.
Former PM, Samuel Hinds, Sharma Solomon, CEO of GAU, Dr. Melissa Varswyk and Vanessa Kissoon.
Mr. Hinds recalled a doctor, a relative, the late Dr. Enid (Wilson) Denbow, who when she returned to Guyana in the mid-1950s, in then colonial British Guiana, with its class sensitivities and male dominated professions, had three strikes against her.
She was a woman, had started her working career as a nurse and had been trained in the USA. She was undaunted and in a long career attained high levels of professional recognition and the acclaim of her patients, he recalled.
The Valedictorian, Dr. Simone Alexander, delivered an inspiring, emotionally filled speech. She spoke of the challenges, which she endured being a wife, mother and working, but more specifically mourning the death of her husband who suddenly passed from prostate cancer.
She said that her journey through medical school was like delivering a child. The process was filled with different emotions and complications but in the end, she has delivered.
Dean of GAU, Dr. Haydock Wilson spoke to the doctors and encouraged them to take a humanistic approach to their medical practice. He reminded them that without patients, there would be no medical profession.
The patient is priority. He reminded the graduating class that medicine is an art and so, patience, grace and understanding must be used.
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