• Submitted by: manso
• Editorial Articles
• 01 / 11 / 2011

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Amadou Jallow. 10 January 2011. The Cuban embassy in The Gambia, has announced its country's renewed commitment to strengthen its existing support to The Gambia's health sector, as part of the bilateral relations between the two sides.

Since 1996, just two years after the coming of Gambia's second republic, the Government of Cuba has been offering numerous assistance and support to the country, particularly in health.

This started with a group of 39 Cuban health specialists who started working in the country until 1999, when President Jammeh visited that country and accepted the proposal to implement a Comprehensive Health Care Programme in The Gambia. However, on June 16, 1999, a group of 254 doctors arrived in the country on Cuba's Humanitarian Development Task Mission, and it was in the same year the first course at Gambia's medical school started.

Ines Fors Fernandez, the Cuban ambassador to The Gambia, told the Daily Observer in an interview last Friday that the government of Cuba, through its Banjul embassy is working to continue to strengthen the support it has been rendering to The Gambia by offering health trainings under its innovative Community Based Medical Programme (CBMP) this year.

She revealed that a lot of students have graduated from the School of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (SMAHS) in Banjul, in medicine, public health and nursing. "The curriculum of the medicine courses," she said, "was taught and performed by Cuban teachers (specialised doctors) in the traditional patterns. On March 2006, the Cuban government made the proposal to President Jammeh to launch the Community Based Medical Programme (CBMP) in The Gambia."

Beginning of the new programme

Ambassador Fernandez disclosed that in March 2007, the Community Based Medical Programme (CBMP) just started on a low key with classrooms, computers and Internet connections, VHS video machine, electric generator and the basic bibliography.

According to her, the government of The Gambia through the official committee constituted by various departments endorsed the programme. "After a hard and long process of choosing students for enrollment in the programme", she went on, "the course started with forty students".

Futures of the CBMP doctors

Further explaining the qualities of award that is connected to the future of each student who graduate under the Community Based Medical Programme (CBMP), Fernandez underscored that all students graduate with Masters Degree. "They will learn the basic core information about medicine that they need to be successful as physicians," she added.

"These community doctors," she went on, "will be professionals with the solid scientific and technological training, with a social, ethic, human and solidarity approach and they will be able to transform the health stage of the population of the communities where they will work."

The occupational profile, she said, comprises job placements related with the attention to the individual, families, groups and community. She expressed optimism that they (future doctors) could specialise later in General Comprehensive Medicine (familiar medicine) and other specialties, according to the needs of the communities.

Main results

Fernandez revealed that there are currently 34 students offering the programme in four Teaching Units in Bwiam, Farafenni, Bansang and Basse."The tutorial teaching-learning process," she said, "is developed by 29 Cuban specialists in General Comprehensive Medicine and 11 specialising in other areas such as clinicians, pediatricians and gynecologists, with the support and collaboration of other professionals and technicians in the various health centers." According to her, during the development of the CBMP, there was improvement in the premedical course and the starting of the first year on time.

Challenges and improvement

Fernandez acknowledged that the programme has some challenges, but expressed hope to solve those problems. "In order to overcome majority of the challenges of the programme," she said, "management should link the CBMP as a school subordinated to the University of The Gambia and to accredit the school by international and regional boards through the accomplishment of international rules."She recommended that the current classrooms of the school be moved to a new building proposed by the government and to extend the CBMP to new communities like Jarra Soma and Essau.

The ambassador commended the government of The Gambia for her continued commitment to the development of the country's health sector. and reiterated her government's unreserved stance to stand by the Gambia at all times.


Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201101100869.html