Two U.S. based doctors are at the KHMH this week offering training in two medical disciplines; one is working in the area of sports-injuries while the other is in neuro-surgery. We caught up first with Dr. Pierre D'hemecourt who explains what his training encompasses.
Dr. Pierre D'hemecourt
"We are doing a teaching seminar on back issues this morning where we are talking about some acute and current back issues and this afternoon we're going to talk about some simple hand wrist fractures, ankle injuries, and some injection techniques. It really is a change in the way the resolution of problems and its important to maintain your skills too; skills both technically and mentally. People evaluate problems differently and so as you get different people from different parts of the world together to discuss problems, we all learn from each and I think that's the interesting thing."
And while Dr. D'hemecourt updates doctors on sports-related injuries, another Doctor, Rober Lacin is also in the KHMH, offering his support to the medical staff in the area of neurosurgery.
Dr. Rober Lacin,
"I am here in Belize in order to set up, help to set-up, a neurosurgical department at Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. We are here in the clinic right now and we are seeing patients. We were in surgery yesterday and we're going to be conducting surgery all day tomorrow. Now we have an excellent neurosurgeon who is full time here, his name is Dr. Lara, and we are going to have another neurosurgeon coming to Belize who is actually Belizean. His name is Dr. Cervantes and he is going to be here in September. These two neurosurgeons are going to be here fulltime providing neurological care to the population of Belize, which is great because before we didn't have a neurosurgeon here. Until a year ago we had on and off neurosurgeons and there was really no neuro-surgical department. So now we have somebody fulltime, I can work with him and we can help set up the hospital for neurological care. A lot of the patients who go the United States or to Mexico to get neurosurgical care, they can stay here and get their treatment here; their surgeries. There is no limitation to how much can be done here as long we have the knowledge and the equipment."
Dr. Fernando Cuellar,
"This is part of our CME, our continues medical educational activities, where we invite foreign physicians to come in and share with us the newer concepts that are involved in medicine. Presently we have the Omni-med Group having a physician here discussing some aspects of emergency care, we also have Dr. Lacin who has been here before helping us to strengthen neuro-surgical department we have here in terms of sharing with our resident neurosurgeon the new techniques, new concepts, and he also fortunately helped us with some materials that we were badly in need of."
Both Doctors Lacin and D'hemecourt will be at the KHMH for the rest of the week conducting similar training exercises.
