The Min­istry of Health, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TMA), and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion/World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go Coun­try Of­fice (PA­HO/WHO TTO) have con­clud­ed the na­tion­al Hansen’s Dis­ease Con­tin­u­ing Med­ical Ed­u­ca­tion sem­i­nar se­ries. The ini­tia­tive fo­cused on strength­en­ing the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to di­ag­nose and man­age Hansen’s Dis­ease (Lep­rosy).

Trinidad and To­ba­go records ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 adult cas­es of Hansen’s Dis­ease an­nu­al­ly. The Min­istry of Health stat­ed that ear­ly de­tec­tion is es­sen­tial, as missed di­ag­noses may lead to ir­re­versible dis­abil­i­ty and dis­fig­ure­ment.

The train­ing se­ries was con­duct­ed across five re­gions: North West, South West, East­ern, North Cen­tral, and To­ba­go. A to­tal of 118 health­care prac­ti­tion­ers from both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors par­tic­i­pat­ed be­tween April and Ju­ly 2025.

Ses­sions were con­duct­ed in small group set­tings and in­cor­po­rat­ed lo­cal case stud­ies and dig­i­tal au­di­ence en­gage­ment tools. The for­mat al­lowed for re­al-time learn­ing as­sess­ments. Av­er­age post-train­ing scores reached 92%.

Tech­ni­cal lead for the se­ries, Di­rec­tor of the Hansen’s Dis­ease Con­trol Unit, Dr. Mush­taq Ali Saiyed, over­saw the con­tent and de­liv­ery. He not­ed the im­prove­ments in clin­i­cal un­der­stand­ing and re­sponse pro­to­cols.

Dr. Rishad Seecher­an, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health, de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress at the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny. He reaf­firmed the Min­istry’s com­mit­ment to the WHO’s Ze­ro Hansen’s Dis­ease by 2030 tar­get and rec­og­nized PA­HO’s on­go­ing sup­port in na­tion­al health­care de­vel­op­ment.

Ad­vi­sor at PA­HO/WHO, Dr. Stephen Nurse-Find­lay, stat­ed the train­ing would strength­en rapid di­ag­no­sis and re­duce stig­ma.

The T&TMA ex­pressed con­tin­ued sup­port for pro­grammes that sup­port clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. The train­ing falls un­der the broad­er PA­HO Elim­i­na­tion Ini­tia­tive, aimed at re­mov­ing se­lect com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases as pub­lic health con­cerns in the re­gion by 2030.

The Min­istry of Health in­di­cat­ed that fur­ther ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing ef­forts and re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tions will con­tin­ue to sup­port the na­tion­al elim­i­na­tion goal.