Michelle Loubon

New­ly-ap­point­ed car­di­ol­o­gist Dr Fa­reed Ali, a grad­u­ate of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Health Sci­ences Ini­tia­tive's car­di­ol­o­gy pro­gramme, says he will be fo­cus­ing on pa­tient ed­u­ca­tion in an ef­fort to pre­vent and re­duce the num­ber of cas­es re­lat­ed to heart prob­lems and di­a­betes.

Ali, 32, whose spe­cial­ty is in­ter­nal med­i­cine, has now re­ceived spe­cial train­ing and honed his skills in find­ing, treat­ing and pre­vent­ing dis­eases of the heart and blood ves­sels.

A din­ner/grad­u­a­tion was host­ed in his ho­n­our by Johns Hop­kins In­sti­tute, Bal­ti­more, USA, at Bu­zo Restau­rant, Os­te­ria Ital­iana, Warn­er Street, New­town, Port-of-Spain, on Feb­ru­ary 23.

Among those present were Ali's wife Di­ana, and re­tired Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Ro­hit Doon. They were joined by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from Johns Hop­kins De­part­ment of Med­i­cine, Car­di­ol­o­gy, in­clud­ing med­ical di­rec­tor, TTH­SI-CVSI Dr Low­ell Maugh­an, Dr Gary Ger­sten­blith and Dr Jeff Brinker.Asked about his fo­cus, Ali said, "Pa­tient ed­u­ca­tion is one of the in­ter­ven­tions we could do with a lot more in Trinidad. We should strive to be one of the coun­tries that fo­cus­es on pa­tients be­ing in charge of their health­care rather than the old cul­ture which was more au­to­crat­ic."

He said there were chal­lenges in­clud­ing get­ting peo­ple to adopt health­i­er eat­ing habits, for ex­am­ple, en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to eat yo­gurt, fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles reg­u­lar­ly, as op­posed to fried fast foods. "The whole ap­proach to health­care needs to be ex­e­cut­ed prop­er­ly in dif­fer­ent ar­eas to be a suc­cess. And I would hope to be one of those to bring about change. The fo­cus would be on de­vel­op­ing a good pre­ven­ta­tive pro­gramme. We need to put the in­for­ma­tion out there. We al­so want to help pa­tients get short­er ap­point­ments," added Ali.

Ali said an­oth­er area that need­ed work was the re­moval of stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion with re­gard to pa­tients af­fect­ed by cer­tain dis­eases and ail­ments."Di­ana is study­ing psy­chi­a­try, and (she says) there is still a lot of work to be done to re­move the stig­ma around men­tal ill­ness. Peo­ple get de­pressed, they need pro­fes­sion­al help and coun­selling.

"But the will has to be there at all lev­els, es­pe­cial­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly, to make pos­i­tive in­roads in­to chron­ic dis­eases in T&T," Ali said.

Dur­ing the for­mal­i­ties, Maugh­an pre­sent­ed Ali with a plaque. He com­mend­ed him for his pro­fes­sion­al­ism while at Johns Hop­kins. His calm de­meanour and com­pas­sion­ate na­ture did not go un­no­ticed, he said.Hav­ing ex­tend­ed best wish­es to Ali, di­rec­tor of Car­di­ol­o­gy and con­sul­tant car­di­ol­o­gist at EWM­SC, Dr Tri­cia Cum­mings, urged him to "go ahead and do some­thing that would make a dif­fer­ence."

Asked how he felt about be­ing ho­n­oured, Ali said, "It is a bit­ter­sweet mo­ment. It rep­re­sents the end of the train­ing pro­gramme. I am hap­py to have ben­e­fit­ted from the Fel­low­ship. I am the fifth car­di­ol­o­gist (to have ben­e­fit­ted), and I hope we would be able to see more pro­grammes of col­lab­o­ra­tion." He thanked every­one who had con­tributed to his aca­d­e­m­ic prowess and achieve­ments.

Dur­ing his fel­low­ship, Ali, who is from Princes Town, stud­ied at Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), at Mt Hope, and at Johns Hop­kins In­sti­tute, Bal­ti­more. The cur­ricu­lum in­clud­ed echocar­di­ol­o­gy, an­giograms, elec­tro phys­i­ol­o­gy and man­ag­ing car­diac CT scans.While prac­tis­ing in­ter­nal med­i­cine lo­cal­ly, Ali, a grad­u­ate of Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, helped pa­tients with chron­ic dis­eases like di­a­betes and high blood pres­sure to man­age them suc­cess­ful­ly.

"The biggest prob­lem is the end stage of un­con­trolled di­a­betes, blood pres­sure and car­diac dis­ease," Ali said.