Fourteen lab technicians from two regional hospitals and the National Reference Laboratory recently benefited from a five-day training course on microbiology reference.
They will now be expected to assist the national laboratory to become fully functional, according to one of the facilitators, Matthew Wattleworth.
The training course was conducted April 11-15 at the national laboratory’s Thomas Street location. It was conducted by the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) which operates out of the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine in the US and has a local office funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Wattleworth, IHV’s Regional Laboratory Coordinator, Caribbean, was assisted by Microbiologist Sandra Medina-Moreno and Senior Technical Advisor of the local IHV office, Dr Moti Ramgopal. Participants included technicians from four management positions at the reference lab and technicians from the Suddie and West Demerara Regional Hospitals.
Wattleworth described the training as the start of a closer collaboration between the IHV and the Ministry of Health since they “have this great building [the national lab] but they are now trying to get things up and running.”
During the training Wattleworth said they focused on building capacity in microbiology work with the morning sessions dealing with case discussions and a review of laboratory techniques and in the afternoons they did practical sessions.
He said that they looked at faecal examination, which is the microscopic evaluation of faeces, examination of parasites, malaria, tuberculosis and leptospirosis, among other diseases.
Meanwhile, Wattleworth told Stabroek News during a recent interview that the only assessment that was done with the trainees was pre-and-post-tests where the participants were given a test before the training and another afterwards to assess the knowledge they would have gained.
He said the only way they would be able to assess how the trainees perform on their jobs following the training is if the health ministry gives them access to the samples taken by the technicians.
Dr Ramgopal, who is an Infectious Disease Specialist, commented during the interview that the assessing of all the persons they train on a yearly basis is something that is important but this was not being done.
He said it would be good not only to know how they function after the training but also whether they remain in the country.
“That is a weakness in the system and that is something we would try to understand more about, how to create solutions to that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Ramgopal described IHV’s presence in Guyana as a “unique partnership” with the health ministry and he disclosed that they are working at three hospitals, St Joseph Mercy Hospital, Davis Memorial Hospital and the Bartica Hospital where they provide care and treatment for persons living with HIV and also lab support.
They provide care and treatment for about 2,000 HIV patients and close to 700 are on anti-retrovirals (ARVs).
Adherence
Importantly their programme has an adherence specialist who meets with patients to find out why they stop taking their medication which they need for the rest of their lives. The specialist visits all three of the hospitals to meet with the patients and she also volunteers her service at a national level to deal with the younger patients.
“As you know in HIV that [people not taking their medication] is a huge part of the problem because people need to take the medication for the rest of their lives,” Dr Ramgopal told Stabroek News.
He explained that every year IHV does different things and last year they did paediatric training for a week and there was also a week of training for nurses.
“Every year we do different things, our plan for this year is to look a little more at adolescent care and HIV patients…,” Dr Ramgopal said.
He explained that he visits Guyana every few months as his role out of the IHV office in Georgetown is to mentor physicians at the three hospitals and they have discussions about patients and the changes in the disease. He goes over the charts of the physicians at the three hospitals to ensure that they provide acceptable treatment and they also discuss other infectious diseases and how to counsel patients.
IHV operates in eight countries with Guyana and Haiti being the only two in the Caribbean benefiting while the other six countries are in Africa with some 200,000 patients being cared for and treated.
IHV describes itself as an organisation that combines the disciplines of basic research, epidemiology and clinical research in a concerted effort to speed the discovery of diagnostics and therapeutics for a wide variety of chronic and deadly viral and immune disorders – most notably the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
It was formed in 1996 as a partnership between the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, the University System of Maryland and the University of Maryland Medical System, and is home to some of the most globally-recognized and world-renowned experts.
At present, more than 75 percent of the institute’s clinical and research effort is targeted at HIV infection, but it also includes the Hepatitis C virus, herpes viruses and cancer research.
