Objective
The purpose of this article is to share our experience conducting a global health outreach initiative in the Radiology Department of the Georgetown Public Hospital in Guyana alongside RAD-AID, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase the availability of medical imaging services in developing countries.
Conclusion
The collaboration between RAD-AID and the Guyanese Ministry of Health has resulted in significant strides for radiology, including the introduction of new resources such as updated sonography and, for the first time, computed tomography for the public sector. In addition, collaboration with the Georgetown Public Hospital has strengthened the clinical management of patients and radiological education of health-care workers in Guyana.
It’s a Friday afternoon in the city of many waters: Georgetown, Guyana. A young 19-year-old male suffers a traumatic motor vehicle accident. The transportation from the scene of the accident takes him to Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), the only tertiary referral hospital in the country. The knowledgeable staff in the emergency department quickly perform an assessment with a thorough physical examination. The emergency physician determines the urgent need for imaging and a request is placed with the radiology department. However, on this busy afternoon many patients wait to obtain critical radiographs and this young man must also wait his turn. Fortunately for this patient, the emergency team is also skilled at sonography despite their limitations with an outdated machine. Given the mechanism of injury and the preliminary findings of a focused assessment with sonography in trauma ultrasound scan, there is heightened concern for blunt abdominal injury. Because GPHC does not have the requisite computed tomography (CT) equipment to continue with analysis and treatment, the patient must be transferred to a neighboring private institution, the closest facility to GPHC that offers such modality. The transfer is costly, not only in delaying the patient’s preliminary analysis and in risking further injury during transfer, but also economically. CT and magnetic resonance imaging studies administered at the private institution are on a for-fee basis only, which may be unaffordable to many patients. Because imaging equipment is in such short supply in Georgetown, it is a continuous challenge for physicians to provide adequate care for their patients. Furthermore, if this accident occurred in the country’s interior regions outside of Georgetown, adequate treatment would simply be impossible for this 19-year-old man and the outcome would be devastating. This reality, although common in Guyana, is unimaginable in many hospitals worldwide.
As a direct observer at GPHC that Friday, I realized the detrimental effect of limited access to prompt radiological examinations such as CT and magnetic resonance imaging in developing countries. The World Health Organization has documented the acuity of the problem, stating that approximately two thirds of the world lacks access to adequate radiological services. Guyana is no exception. The issue is as pressing there as in any developing country in the world. Although urgent, the country’s dilemma is not unsolvable.
Therein lies the reason for my involvement and journey to Guyana—to share medical knowledge through the use of current technologies in radiology, and the belief that such sharing can bring real progress in the medical care of patients in remote regions of the world.
Linguistically, Guyana is English speaking; culturally, it is Caribbean; geographically, it is located on the northeast coast of South America; economically, it is the third poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean according to the World Bank per capita (GDP) rankings. Like most developing countries, major challenges exist in Guyana that impede the quality of and adequate access to health care and radiological services. RAD-AID, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase the availability of medical imaging services in developing countries, has been working with the Guyanese Ministry of Health to improve the state of medical imaging in Guyana. Together, the need for a formal radiology residency program in Guyana has been identified, and its development is currently underway. To initiate this endeavor, Dr. Teodora Bochnakova, a third-year radiology resident at University Hospitals of Cleveland, performed a thorough evaluation of the medical imaging system at GPHC. Her work resulted in a formal report, which assessed the status of the radiological equipment and the improvements necessary to make advances within the GPHC radiology department.
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
TABLE 1
Resources for Residents and Fellows Interested in Global Health Opportunities
RAD-AID International https://www.rad-aid.org/ Imaging the World http://imagingtheworld.org/ Partners in Health http://www.pih.org/ ACR Goldberg-Reeder Resident Travel Grant http://www.acr.org/Membership/Volunteering/International-Outreach/Goldberg-Reeder-Grant ACR Ghesani-Kajani East Africa Radiology Scholarship http://www.acr.org/Membership/Volunteering/International-Outreach/Ghesani-Kajani-East-Africa-Radiology-Scholarship
ACR, American College of Radiology.
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<