News — Medical

Elizabeth Holmes had claimed to have invented a medical tool that could scan a single drop of blood for all kinds of diseases. This was a revolutionary invention that could have changed preventative healthcare. At 19, she created a company that drew numerous investors, making her the first Silicon Valley self made billionaire. However, it turns out her invention was fraudulent and non-existent. Holmes is now facing multiple charges and could face up to 20 years in prison. For all the hope and hype she created over her revolutionary invention, Holmes killed the dream of having the best preventative healthcare tool ever made. What do you think?

The Gondar College of Medical Sciences is located in Gondar in the northwestern part of Ethiopia.  The college, founded in 1954, is the oldest health professional training institute in Ethiopia.

The medical college was located in Gondar in 1954 in part because of the malaria epidemic that devastated the region during 1952 and 1953.  The college was designed to educate various health care workers in a manner that would allow them to address the particular health needs of rural Ethiopia. While most professional training institutions focus on preparing graduates to understand the disease processes as they affect individuals and especially on diagnosis and management, Gondar College has emphasized preventative medicine and focused on public health (community health) in its training, service, and research activities.

In 1961 the college was placed under the direction of the Haile Selassie I University, now known as Addis Ababa University. The college also offered for the first time a bachelor of science degree in Public Health. Over the next 20 years, the college played a prominent role in preparing over 1,100 professionals. In 1978 the institution was authorized to establish a medical school to train doctors, health officers, community nurses, and other health professionals. Since 1979 when the first class enrolled in the school’s medical program, the program has grown both in size and function. In 1994, the college was renamed the Gondar College of Medical Sciences (GCMS), and its mission was redefined to include the basic research in health sciences and to serve as a referral health center for the region.

The college is at present undertaking various projects for expansion of its activities including construction of a new library, a student dormitory, classrooms, and science laboratories. It increased its student enrollment by 30% with the 2009 school year.

Today GCMS has over 2,000 students enrolled in medical and health science fields ranging from nursing and public health to internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, radiology, dentistry, and orthopedics. The students are recruited from all regions of Ethiopia.

In 2004 GCMS became part of the University of Gondar.  The entire university has 11,000 regular students and 6,000 extension students in 35 undergraduate programs and 8 graduate programs.

Colleagues of a Ghanaian medical student in Cuba who passed away on Friday say they believe his death “could have been prevented”.

Erasmus Klutse, a second-year student at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) in Cuba, died on May 7 in the Caribbean country’s capital, Havana, after joining his friends to play his most-liked sport, basketball.

Klutse was a medical student on Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) scholarship, and his colleagues say the harsh living conditions in Cuba led to his death.

The Ghanaian medical students in Cuba have since called on their government back home to come to their rescue, saying that the GNPC and the Ghana Scholarships Secretariat have delayed in sending their stipends for months now.

Eugene Oko Richman, a member of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) executive committee in Cuba, said in an interview with Ghanaian media Class FM that Klutse lost his life because the Cuban government failed to send an ambulance during a medical emergency.

“Just this last Friday, we lost a student of ours, a brother, Erasmus Klutse and one of the reasons why we lost him was because of the poor health treatment that we’ve been receiving,” Richman said. “And the issue that we have is that the mission here has made it very easy for the Cubans not to make us a priority when it comes to our health because if they had sent an ambulance to him, we feel that his death could have been prevented.”

“So, that’s the reason why we are agitated and we are calling that there should be measures put in place to that things like this could be prevented”, he added.

A statement by the student body said Klutse “was a joy to all who knew him”. Stressing that his death was “preventable”, the statement outlined key issues that have reportedly been overlooked by the stakeholders in charge of the welfare of the Ghanaian students in Cuba.

Meanwhile, the GNPC Foundation says stipends to the medical students in Cuba have delayed because there is a disagreement over the mode of payment. It said students want to be paid cash in hand, which is against financial protocols.

The remains of Klutse will be flown back to Ghana after an autopsy is done.

Dr. Thakgalo Thibela is being hailed as one of South Africa’s youngest doctors, having graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Witwatersrand. According to the Health Practice Council of South Africa, Thibela is the youngest active female doctor in the country.

The 21-year-old woman is living her lifelong dream of being a doctor. She is helping to put smiles back on the faces of her patients.

“The gratitude patients have after receiving help brings me so much joy,” she was quoted by The Saturday Star. “Seeing smiles on patient’s faces after consultation or when they get discharged from the hospital is why I love this job so much. I’ve always wanted to help people and medicine has given me the platform to do just that.”

Thibela grew up in Violetbank, a rural village in Bushbuckridge, in Mpumalanga in eastern South Africa. Coming from a middle-class family, her dad is a manager at a local municipality while her mother is a primary school teacher. Her parents valued education and instilled in her the power of education at a very young age.

Having been educated through the public school system, Thibela is proud of her achievements. She has always been the youngest person in her class since high school after skipping grades. Thibela skipped grade 7 in primary school and enrolled at Lehlasedi High School where she barely spent a week in grade 9 and was promoted to grade 10.

During her high school graduation, a then 15-year-old Thibela had distinctions in seven out of eight subjects.

“I was very fortunate that the schools I went to (public schools by the way) promoted students they felt were doing well academically, so as a result I didn’t do Grade 7 and 9 and I also started school a year early which enabled me to complete matric at 15,” she told The Saturday Star.

At 16, all Thibela wanted to do was to be a doctor. Thus, during school applications, she chose medicine as her first choice. She was subsequently admitted to Wits University at the age of 16 where she enrolled for a six-year degree in the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.

Gaining admission to the university was her first time living away from her family and outside her village to the city. It was quite difficult readjusting and she had to deal with low self-esteem coupled with bullying from the city folks because of her thick village accent. She was also ridiculed by her university peers for not pronouncing certain English words the way most people pronounced them, a report by News24 said.

At a point, she felt out of place. Nonetheless, she had one goal and that was to finish medical school. She performed very well in school, earning her the Golden Key International membership, a recognition for students doing well academically. At 21, she has completed her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, making herself and her family proud.

She has been instrumental amid the COVID-19 pandemic, working on the frontline with her colleagues at Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg, where she is doing her practical experiential learning.

Patients and doctors alike get fascinated by her skills and level of professionalism especially when they get to know she is 21 years old. In her second year of medical school, Thibela got intrigued by the human brain during a dissection practical and has hopes of specializing in neurosurgery sometime soon.

“The brain and nervous system have always fascinated me. If the brain stops working, whether your heart is still beating or not, you are considered dead.

“For me, the brain is the most important organ in the human body, and I would like to know more about it and help people who have a brain and nervous system lesions get better,” she said.

Thibela hopes to inspire others to chase their dreams as well, especially the young ones in her village.

People who draw on their own experiences to make the world a better place for others are invaluable and Dr. Oluwatomilayo (Tito) Daodu is a poster girl for such people. She had a rough childhood and as the first Black female pediatric surgeon practicing in Canada at the Alberta’s Children’s Hospital Foundation, she wants to make surgical care accessible to all.

Daodu is an award-winning researcher, volunteer, and the first Black pediatric surgeon working to “break down barriers to patients in need of surgical care.”

She believes her job is the best in the world as she does not only get to save lives but save the lifetimes of children she encounters.

As part of Black History Month, the American Pediatric Surgical Association (APSA) gave a nod to the remarkable work Daodu is doing in her field on Twitter.

According to Avenue Calgary, Daodu was born in Nigeria. After being deported from Canada, she permanently moved to the country when she was eight. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she grew up in a rough neighborhood in the inner city of Winnipeg.

Determined to be more than she sees around her, Daodu chose to make the local drop-in center for kids, Wes Broadway Youth Outreach, her second home. There she was mentored by volunteers, and to date, she credits them for changing her life.

It was then that she took a stance to do everything she could to help the less privileged in society because when they get help, they, in turn, might grow up to reciprocate that help and the entire cycle is broken for a better society.

To her, the world would be a better place when pediatric surgeons are accessible to all peoples everywhere. “When we help the worst off or those with the least access, we do a service to the entire system,” she said.

She received her medical training at the University of Manitoba and did her residency and fellowship at the University of Calgary. Her research was on the impact of socioeconomic status on surgical outcomes and access to care.

For her outstanding work to society, she was nominated as part of Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 in October 2019. The award scheme recognizes high-achieving Calgarians who are doing their bid to effect change in society and creating a lasting impact on the future of others.

As a medical student, Daodu was part of a team that developed a project centered on adolescent gender and reproductive health in Tanzania.

There were no summer ‘holidays’ for her either because she spent her summers in her native country Nigeria researching early childhood pneumonia and later launched ‘a surgical needs assessment’ for Nigeria as well.

Currently, Daodu is pursuing a master’s in public health at the Harvard University’s T.H Chan School of Public health. At Harvard, Daodu is part of a team working to modify the safe surgery checklist for high-income countries around the world, per Avenue Calgary.

Her passion is to promote justice and equity in medicine through Global Health. She is participating in ongoing research on Global and Public Health that focuses on improving surgical outcomes and improving equal access to surgical care for Canadians and the world at large.

“One of the things that excite me about the future is that I have a story that not that many people have,” she said. “I am probably uniquely situated from what I’ve gone through in life to be able to speak not just from an academic point of view, but from real life.”