Four Guyanese-born doctors now practicing in New York and New Jersey have been included in a list of best doctors for the tri-state area by Network Journal, a magazine for Black professionals and small businesses.
The magazine’s February issue lists Drs Stephen Carryl, Albert Duncan, Frank Babb and Harrison Mitchell among the area’s best doctors. The Guyanese- born Editor-in-Chief at the Network Journal Rosalind Kilkenny said she did not even know that some of the doctors were Guyanese prior to the article being published. She said she is very proud of the accomplishment of her countrymen.
Dr Carryl is currently Chairman and Programme Director of the Department of Surgery at the Brooklyn Hospital Center (TBHC). He is also the Director of Bariatric Surgery at TBHC. Carryl is also an assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in NY.
He established the Overseas Medical Assistance Team (OMAT), which provides medical humanitarian missions to the Caribbean, Guyana and Africa. The Consumers Research Council of America recently named him one of America’s Top Surgeons. Carryl always had a drive to excel in anything that he does.
He attended the multilateral school in Wismar, Guyana, where he played local basketball. As a youngster, he was very good at basketball. He tried out for the junior team and was selected in 1977. However, because he was, and still is, a very religious young man, he couldn’t practise on Saturdays as he is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. He did not participate in the practice and was not selected to go to Suriname to play basketball in the Inter-Guiana games.
The next year there was a new coach, who, after hearing about Carryl’s dilemma, said there would be no more Saturday games. Carryl made the team and went to Suriname where he averaged 30 points per game and was named the most valuable player for the junior basketball team.
He left Guyana in 1979 to pursue his studies in medicine. While growing up in Linden, Carryl said he respected Dr Gordon Baird who was a surgeon at the Linden Hospital. He had an opportunity to work with Dr Baird in New York. His next medical mission with OMAT will be to Linden in May. Dr Duncan, also an attending doctor at TBHC and Long Island College Hospital, is listed as a top surgeon in the Oncolog friends.
Dr Babb is listed as Pulmonary Medicine/ Surgery. Dr Mitchell is listed under Internal Medicine and practices medicine at St Luke’s Hospital.
He and a group of other health care professionals formed the Health and Education Relief for Guyana (HERG) in 2000. The HERG group visited Guyana during the Great Flood and provided medical services
