The Tribune

By RIEL MAJOR

Tribune Staff Reporter

rmajor@tribunemedia.net

OFFICIALS from the University of the West Indies announced yesterday a two-year fellowship training programme in an effort to diagnose and treat cancer arising in the reproductive organs of women.

The joint healthcare partnership between the University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Medical Sciences Facility and the University of Miami’s Leonard Miller School of Medicine intends to intervene and reverse those deadly cancer statistics in women.

This fellowship programme was launched in July 2018 by Dr Geremias Rangel of Guyana.

Dr Robin Roberts, director of UWI School of Clinical Medicine and Research, said they would like to start a genetic screening programme for women who are diagnosed with the disease.

He said: “It’s a two-year programme for specialists in obstetrics and gynaecology to specialise further in the diagnosis and treatment of cancers arising in the reproductive organs of women, and to become designated as gynaecological cancer experts.

“During this two-year period, the programme will have the gynaecologist being stationed and trained at the University of Miami, Canada, Ireland, and throughout the Caribbean including The Bahamas. This training programme was inspired and funded by the International Gynaecologic Cancer Society and the University of Miami with a goal to reduce and hopefully eradicate the burden of female reproductive cancers in low resource countries like the Bahamas. So today this is truly a red-letter day in the annals of health in the Bahamas.”

He said every week in this country, at least one Bahamian woman is diagnosed with a cancer of their reproductive organ system.

“Every month in the Bahamas, on average, we bury at least one woman who dies from cancer of the cervix. This should not happen today in the modern practice of medicine. No woman should die from cancer of the cervix; it’s a totally preventable disease.

“We know too that the ovary is deadly; we diagnose on average one per month in The Bahamas [with ovarian cancer] and almost 75 percent die from the disease. We know we can detect this long before it occurs because 40 percent of our women inherit the gene that causes ovarian cancer. But we know we can detect this if we can do genetic testing on those individuals and their families beforehand so we can prevent these diseases too,” Dr Roberts added.

Mary Eiken, CEO of the International Gynaecological Cancer Society, said the organisation believes in enhancing cancer prevention by formalised training programmes throughout the globe. The programme will cost roughly $30,000 a year per trainee.

Mrs Eiken said: “With our partnership with the University of Miami and leadership there we have come to the conclusion with the team that the Bahamas would make an excellent site for us to do fellowship training. The burden of disease is high in the region and we believe we can reduce this not only through awareness but through highly trained surgical skills as well as screening and vaccinations.

“The IGCS will provide not only the resources and funding but also some of infrastructure educational exchanges that will happen as part of this fellowship training and in the end the examination to allow for a certificate to be issued to the trainee for the completion of the programme.”