SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has per­formed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,400 ma­jor sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures and an­oth­er 15,000 pro­ce­dures in oth­er ar­eas, in­clud­ing den­tal ser­vices, un­der its new board and man­age­ment, with the num­bers con­tin­u­ing to rise.

NCRHA chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh at­trib­uted the in­crease to the ded­i­ca­tion of staff, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sul­tant sur­geons and reg­is­trars, who he said con­tin­ued to pro­vide ex­cel­lent clin­i­cal ser­vices while train­ing fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.

He said hun­dreds of post­grad­u­ate stu­dents across var­i­ous med­ical and sur­gi­cal dis­ci­plines ben­e­fit­ed from the knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence, re­search and teach­ing of se­nior con­sul­tants and pro­fes­sors who guid­ed them in de­vel­op­ing their clin­i­cal and sur­gi­cal skills.

Gopeesingh was speak­ing on Thurs­day night at Sum­mit Restau­rant and Lounge, Xtra Plaza, Aranguez, where mem­bers of the NCRHA’s Sur­gi­cal De­part­ment cel­e­brat­ed Dr Ravi Ma­haraj’s el­e­va­tion to pro­fes­sor of on­co­log­i­cal surgery.

Ma­haraj re­ceived the pro­fes­sor­ship dur­ing the cur­rent aca­d­e­m­ic se­mes­ter in recog­ni­tion of his con­tri­bu­tions to sur­gi­cal care, med­ical ed­u­ca­tion, re­search and ser­vice, as well as his com­mit­ment to train­ing fu­ture Caribbean sur­geons. His med­ical ca­reer spans more than three decades.

Re­flect­ing on the de­vel­op­ment of surgery in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Gopeesingh re­called in­tro­duc­ing la­paro­scop­ic surgery lo­cal­ly in 1982.

“I brought the first la­paro­scope from Bo­go­ta in Colom­bia, hav­ing trained there for a few months, through Venezuela, in­to Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal on a schol­ar­ship from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty,” he said.

He ex­plained that the equip­ment helped med­ical stu­dents gain ex­pe­ri­ence in la­paro­scop­ic pro­ce­dures from the ear­ly 1980s. Since then, Trinidad and To­ba­go has de­vel­oped con­sid­er­able ex­per­tise in the field.

Gopeesingh al­so re­flect­ed on his ca­reer in on­col­o­gy, in­clud­ing a post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ship and ap­point­ment as a vis­it­ing as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to in 1988.

He said the Caribbean had since made sig­nif­i­cant progress in de­vel­op­ing ad­vanced can­cer ser­vices, in­clud­ing an in­crease in the num­ber of gy­nae­co­log­i­cal, med­ical and ra­di­a­tion on­col­o­gists.

He al­so high­light­ed ad­vances in ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py, in­clud­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of lin­ear ac­cel­er­a­tors in both the pub­lic and pri­vate health sec­tors.

Gopeesingh en­cour­aged young med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to pur­sue spe­cial­ist and sub­spe­cial­ist train­ing, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

He said ef­forts were al­so un­der way to in­tro­duce ro­bot­ic surgery in Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­flect­ing the coun­try's pur­suit of ad­vances in med­ical tech­nol­o­gy.

“We are work­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly in pur­suit of sim­i­lar ad­vances with emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to im­prove sur­gi­cal treat­ment, man­age­ment and health­care de­liv­ery,” he said.

Gopeesingh said ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) al­so had the po­ten­tial to trans­form med­i­cine by cre­at­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties for di­ag­no­sis, treat­ment and pa­tient care.

Com­par­ing mod­ern med­i­cine with the con­di­tions un­der which he be­gan prac­tis­ing, Gopeesingh re­called that doc­tors in the 1970s re­lied heav­i­ly on phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tions and clin­i­cal judge­ment be­fore ul­tra­sound, com­put­ed to­mog­ra­phy (CT) scans and mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) be­came wide­ly avail­able.

He said the NCRHA now per­formed more than 150 CT scans dai­ly, amount­ing to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45,000 an­nu­al­ly, and con­duct­ed more than 4,500 MRI scans in the past year.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­por­tance of mod­ern di­ag­nos­tic tech­nol­o­gy, Gopeesingh cau­tioned young doc­tors against re­ly­ing sole­ly on CT scans and MRI with­out con­sid­er­ing pa­tients’ clin­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tions and ap­ply­ing fun­da­men­tal ex­am­i­na­tion skills.

He urged them to learn from ex­pe­ri­enced con­sul­tants and de­vel­op their own clin­i­cal judge­ment and ex­per­tise.

The cel­e­bra­tion of Ma­haraj’s pro­fes­sor­ship high­light­ed the con­tri­bu­tion of spe­cial­ist sur­geons to health­care de­liv­ery, med­ical ed­u­ca­tion, teach­ing and re­search in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ma­haraj earned his Bach­e­lor of Med­i­cine and Bach­e­lor of Surgery (MBBS) de­gree from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in 1994. He sub­se­quent­ly ob­tained fel­low­ships from the Roy­al Col­lege of Sur­geons in Ire­land in 1998 and the Roy­al Col­lege of Sur­geons of Eng­land in 1999.

In 2009, he com­plet­ed a fel­low­ship in sur­gi­cal on­col­o­gy at Tata Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal in Mum­bai, In­dia, where he re­ceived ad­vanced train­ing in can­cer surgery.

Since 2021, Ma­haraj has served as head of the De­part­ment of Clin­i­cal Sur­gi­cal Sci­ences at UWI’s St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. In that role, he has con­tributed to un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate sur­gi­cal train­ing, aca­d­e­m­ic lead­er­ship and the men­tor­ship of as­pir­ing sur­geons.

His com­mit­ment to med­ical ed­u­ca­tion al­so ex­tends to au­thor­ship. In 2024, he pub­lished "Text­book of Surgery for Med­ical Stu­dents", a re­source aimed at sup­port­ing sur­gi­cal ed­u­ca­tion and the de­vel­op­ment of fu­ture doc­tors.