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Emphasis on training as region’s surgeons meet
From left Dr Errol Walrond and Professor Vijay Naraynsingh
With major emphasis on lifting the level of surgery and surgical training in the Caribbean, the Eighth Caribbean College of Surgeons Conference (CCOS) was kicked into motion yesterday with an opening ceremony at the Umana Yana in Georgetown.
The CCOS is a unique institution that concentrates all the surgical skills of the Caribbean and their network groupings into a single body.
According to Dr Errol Walrond, Chairman of the Caribbean Accreditation of Associations of Medical and Health Professionals, like several other organisations throughout the region, surgeons have for a long time had links across the Caribbean.
He noted that the Caribbean College of Surgeons was formed to consolidate such links and to engage experiences and also to influence young surgeons so that they would be better able to serve the region’s people. “One of the things that I think we all know about the Caribbean is that we are modern but poor, so that what you see being done in various professional fields is that we strive to be the best, not only the best in our particular countries, we want to be the best in world; but to be able to serve our people with the constrained circumstances that we have.”
And it has been such fora, he said, that have been serving the interest of the people of the Caribbean and have seen the scholarly contributions of leading surgeons, the likes of Dean Sharma.
Sharma, has over the years contributed tremendously to scholarly activities on surgery by showing not only things that can be done in the Caribbean, but the innovation that has impacted on surgery elsewhere in the world.
The Caribbean College by the very presence of the members who practice around the Caribbean seeks to influence young doctors and others in training, according to Dr Walrond. He recounted that the University of the West Indies, some 40 years ago, had taken the initiative to start post graduate training for surgeons which was stimulated by two main reasons, that is because young doctors had to leave the Region to be trained and often found the greener pastures abroad more friendly. In addition it was recognised that the training overseas was not entirely suited to the needs of the Caribbean.
“Not that it was not advanced, but it could not serve both the advanced needs and the needs of our communities which may have constrained circumstances…We felt that we needed to forge a path that not only reaches the standard of the metropolitan countries but those surgeons would be able to serve our countries in their constrained circumstances.”
President of the Eighth Conference, Professor Vijay Naraynsingh, said that currently the College is working aggressively towards increasing cooperation between the various territories.
“We have some 17 territories; at least 14 of them will have a population of below half a million, relatively small territories, and the smaller they are the lesser the level of specialisation that can be sustained.”
It is for this reason, he said, that conferences and workshops are held in order to bring all Caribbean practitioners closer together. He noted that people do send patients from one territory to another for specialised investigation and treatment.
“So the college does have a role in that, but it is more an indirect role because it is a referral often from person to person. There is not yet an established government to government arrangement, except in some special areas.”
According to Professor Naraynsingh, the conference has been moving from territory to territory having touched Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua, St Kitts, St Lucia, and the Bahamas already. By moving across the Caribbean he noted that “we can get practitioners aware of the work being done in the Region and the people who are actively involved.”
At this conference some 42 papers will be reviewed, of which six are from Guyana, with an added distribution from among seven of the Caribbean Islands, with a few from Canada and the United States.
The meeting, Professor Naraynsingh said will serve the particular purpose of “bringing lots of like-minded people together who are progressive in their thinking and we need this kind of association and organisation to lift and maintain the level of surgery and surgical training.”
The conference which will be held at the Princess International Hotel will conclude on Saturday.
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