Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

She loves to trav­el the world, does week­ly pi­lates, and is an ad­mir­er of Jen­nifer Lopez. How­ev­er, apart from max­imis­ing the lit­tle time she gets to re­lax and keep her­self healthy, Dr Saman­tha Bha­gan is bal­anc­ing the de­mands of be­ing a wife, a moth­er of two, and an ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist for many.

The for­mer Miss T&T who rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try at the Miss World pageant in 1989, said her road to be­com­ing a doc­tor was paved at an ear­ly age when she vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal with her fa­ther.

“My fa­ther was a med­ical prac­ti­tion­er and my moth­er was a nurse, so go­ing to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal with him when I was younger en­cour­aged me to be­come a doc­tor. I want­ed to help women and that’s what pushed me to the field of ob­stet­rics and gy­nae­col­o­gy,” Bha­gan said.

When asked what ex­pe­ri­ence she has had as a doc­tor that still stays with her, Bha­gan said “There were many.” She re­count­ed one ma­jor event of her work when she had been tasked to de­liv­er a pre­ma­ture ba­by. “An­oth­er pa­tient who’d come in–and she still comes to me–came in preterm labour and de­liv­ered a ba­by 26 weeks of ges­ta­tion. And I re­mem­ber call­ing in a pae­di­a­tri­cian and they said, ‘The ba­by would not sur­vive.’ A nurse and I sat with the pa­tient and we got a nurse to dri­ve us to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where the ba­by was tak­en. That ba­by is still alive, do­ing well at school, thriv­ing like any oth­er child,” Bha­gan said, beam­ing with pride.

Un­be­knownst to some, the gy­nae­col­o­gist had her own strug­gle with in­fer­til­i­ty is­sues which she has since con­quered. At 46 years old, thanks to in vit­ro fer­til­i­sa­tion (IVF), the birth of her first child, Ivan­ka Sush­mi­ta Lal­la, who is now six years old, came about.

Gy­nae­col­o­gy deals with pro­vid­ing sex­u­al health and re­pro­duc­tive ser­vices to women–from can­cer screen­ings to mat­ters of in­fer­til­i­ty to name a few.

Is­sues re­lat­ing to women and young girl’s re­pro­duc­tive sys­tem and func­tion, un­for­tu­nate­ly, in many in­stances, have been ne­glect­ed, even to this day.

 Asked if she thinks the coun­try is fail­ing young girls and women when it comes to their re­pro­duc­tive health and well-be­ing, she said ed­u­ca­tion was the way for­ward to bet­ter days.

“I think ed­u­ca­tion is a way to help young girls and ed­u­cate them on their health. We should teach them in school about their men­stru­al cy­cle. And con­cern­ing sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty, we can ed­u­cate them on con­tra­cep­tives and vac­cines they should get be­fore they be­come ac­tive like the Gar­dasil vac­cine that I usu­al­ly en­cour­age my pa­tients to get for their young girls,” Dr Bha­gan said.

Be­sides aid­ing in the re­pro­duc­tive health of women who flock to her for as­sis­tance, Dr Bha­gan al­so deals with the look and feel of in­ti­mate ar­eas of the body. Dr Bha­gan staunch­ly be­lieves beau­ty is more than skin­care for the face.

Af­ter hear­ing sev­er­al com­plaints from her old­er pa­tients re­gard­ing in­ti­ma­cy prob­lems with their part­ners, she de­cid­ed to in­cor­po­rate Ther­mi­Va (Non-sur­gi­cal vagi­nal re­ju­ve­na­tion) in­to her prac­tice.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Bha­gan, the treat­ment us­es ra­dio-fre­quen­cy heat to help make the vagi­nal area look younger. It al­so tight­ens the vagi­na and helps with se­cre­tions for women who ex­pe­ri­ence painful in­ter­course.

Out­side the of­fice, Dr Bha­gan, the wife of Se­nior Coun­cil Lar­ry Lal­la, tries to in­cor­po­rate ex­er­cise through­out the day, ad­mit­ting that it can be tricky to bal­ance work and home life, es­pe­cial­ly with chil­dren. How­ev­er, she is adamant about mak­ing the ef­fort to live the best of both worlds.

“Once I fin­ish the of­fice, of course, I come home to see about my lit­tle daugh­ter. I am try­ing,” Bha­gan said. “I am very proud of her, she is such a giv­ing and lov­ing child. She shares her things with oth­er chil­dren and is very spir­i­tu­al, in the morn­ing she sings the Hanu­man Chal­isa,” Dr Bha­gan said.

As a for­mer Miss T&T, she ad­vised the cur­rent Miss T&T, Ache Abra­hams, who copped the ti­tle of Miss World Caribbean at the 71st Miss World pageant held on March 9 in In­dia, to con­tin­ue to give her best and not com­pro­mise her iden­ti­ty.

“She spoke about her men­tal health, and she was hon­est. I’m hap­py that she did that. I think she’s do­ing a very good job,” Dr Bha­gan said.

Women are urged by Dr Bha­gan to do an­nu­al mam­mo­grams, and pap smears, and to see their gy­nae­col­o­gists in the event they be­come menopausal to man­age symp­toms and rule out oth­er health con­di­tions un­re­lat­ed to menopause. She al­so rec­om­mend­ed that old­er women ex­er­cise and in­crease the amount of fi­bre in their di­ets.

“I’m try­ing to be­come healthy, too,” Bha­gan said.

Dr Bha­gan is the head of the Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­col­o­gy De­part­ment at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre and works as a con­sul­tant to the hos­pi­tal.  

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