Friday July 13 2007
by Patricia Campbell
Minister of Health John Maginley has said that consultants from the
Holberton Hospital will go before Cabinet next Tuesday to discuss
solutions to the standoff with the medical graduates from Cuba.
"In the opinion of the Medical Board, as it is, they are not comfortable
that these people are suitably prepared," he said.
Speaking on Observer Radio yesterday, the minister of health said that a
draft policy on the issue is before Cabinet. He said consultants who
have been working at Holberton with already registered graduates from
Cuba have been invited to apprise Cabinet on the issue.
Maginley appeared to acknowledge that insufficient planning had taken
place at the time when the government decided to send off students to
study medicine in Cuba. He linked this to the ongoing standoff, where
Holberton Hospital is unable to absorb graduates into its staff or
provide sufficient supervision for them to undertake rotations at the
sole public hospital. Holberton is the only institution in Antigua
recognised as an internship facility for the returning doctors and the
Medical Registration Board has said that it will not register the
doctors returning from Cuba until they have completed the rotations.
"The government of Cuba offered the government of Antigua some medical
scholarships, through the Ministry of Education. No research was done as
to what the Cuban medical programme is," he said.
"The Cuban system, which is peculiar to Cuba, is not the same medical
system like they have in other places. So we get, sometime last year,
graduates coming from Cuba… What they said is that they have graduated
from medical school and the Medical Registration Board then proceeded to
say, well they have graduated, we will register them." He continued to
explain that when that batch of students were registered they all
requested and were granted positions at Holberton. It was at that point,
Maginley said, that inadequacies in their training were discovered.
"We started hearing that, really and truly, these people aren't prepared
clinically. They didn't really do many rotations," he said. He explained
that medication was learned in Spanish and treatment protocols in Cuba
differed from those utilised in Antigua.
Maginley said that it was only in January, when he led a delegation to
Cuba, that the local authorities were informed that Cuban doctors have
to complete a further three years of on-the-job-training before they can
specialise or operate independently.
http://www.antiguasun.com/paper/?as=view&sun=203024056607132007&an=120957099907122007&ac=Local
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