Michelle Loubon

Guests got a brief les­son on the es­sen­tial na­ture of dis­eases at the Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga awards at Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's, on April 17. Grena­da-born Ja­maica res­i­dent Prof Kath­leen Coard re­ceived the award for her out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy. Clad in a long, black dress which ac­cen­tu­at­ed her svelte fig­ure, Coard seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­light­en guests, in­clud­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning, on her pro­fes­sion.

Coard said, "To the lay­man, the word pathol­o­gy is usu­al­ly equat­ed with foren­sic pathol­o­gy. This is un­der­stand­able, since the spe­cial­i­ty of foren­sic pathol­o­gy, while it rep­re­sents not on­ly a small area of the over­all dis­ci­pline of pathol­o­gy, has main­tained a high-pro­file sta­tus, giv­en the pro­lif­er­a­tion of foren­sic TV dra­ma se­ries, in­clud­ing the pop­u­lar CSI."

Coard added, "For most of us, anatom­ic pathol­o­gists, our work is ac­tu­al­ly con­cerned more with the liv­ing than of un­rav­el­ling the mys­ter­ies of the dead, in­for­ma­tion that comes as a sur­prise to most peo­ple with whom we in­ter­act." The work re­quires a trained eye and a metic­u­lous ap­proach. "We do this by our unique skill of be­ing able to in­ter­pret and make di­ag­noses from the his­to­log­i­cal ap­pear­ance of cells and tis­sues ex­am­ined un­der a mi­cro­scope." "In ef­fect, if any of you has ever had a biop­sy done, or has had surgery that re­sult­ed in the ex­ci­sion of any tis­sue, large or small, the per­son re­spon­si­ble for ex­am­in­ing this spec­i­men, and who sup­plies a di­ag­no­sis, along with oth­er crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion es­sen­tial for fur­ther man­age­ment, is an anatom­ic pathol­o­gist like my­self," added Coard.

El­e­ment of mys­tery

She said most pa­tients nev­er met anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gists, but they played an in­te­gral part in their di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment. Apart from the pa­tients, they re­main un­known to pol­i­cy mak­ers and those who pro­vide their re­sources and those iden­ti­fy­ing peo­ple for ac­co­lades.

She com­mend­ed those who were re­spon­si­ble for her "dis­cov­ery." An im­pressed pre­sen­ter Wen­dell Con­stan­tine said, "I'm glad to fi­nal­ly meet an anatom­ic pathol­o­gist."

Hang­ing with Sir El­lis

Coard de­scribed Sab­ga's recog­ni­tion as "the zenith of my ca­reer so far." She thanked her 91-year-old moth­er Vert Coard, who had flown in from Cana­da, and praised her dad for im­part­ing his work eth­ic. Join­ing in the cel­e­bra­tion in the Coard camp was for­mer Pres­i­dent, 92-year-old Sir El­lis Clarke. Then, Coard's oth­er sis­ters, Chris­tine Lewis, Elise Whit­ting­ton and Mau­reen Coard posed for pho­tographs.

More In­fo

Prof Kath­leen Coard's con­tri­bu­tion

�2 Re­spect­ed au­thor, re­searcher and teacher in the field of med­ical pathol­o­gy

�2 First fe­male grad­u­ate of UWI Med­ical DM (Pathol­o­gy) pro­gramme to be made Pro­fes­sor of Pathol­o­gy

�2 Re­cip­i­ent of the Dan Hoyte Prize in Anato­my, UWI, 1974, a WHO-PA­HO Fel­low­ship in Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Pathol­o­gy, and the Ja­maica Med­ical Foun­da­tion Award for Out­stand­ing Achieve­ment in the Field of Pathol­o­gy and Re­search (2009).

Mem­ber of the OECS Nom­i­nat­ing Com­mit­tee, Bev­er­ley Steele, said, "Pro­fes­sor Coard has an en­vi­able record of suc­cess­ful re­search and teach­ing. She has enor­mous en­er­gy and dri­ve and many years ahead to com­plete and fur­ther her aca­d­e­m­ic work, teach­ing and vol­un­teerism."

Coard shared her cre­do: "To achieve ex­cel­lence, you do not al­ways have to do ex­tra­or­di­nary things, but the or­di­nary things ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly well." She paid ku­dos to fel­low Caribbean doyennes– St Lu­cia's Adri­an Augi­er, 2010 Lau­re­ate for Arts and Let­ters–and Guyana's Syd­ney Al­lic­ock, for Pub­lic and Civic Con­tri­bu­tions.