Rishard Khan

Rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Much like their nurs­ing coun­ter­parts, sur­geons are al­so mi­grat­ing in search of bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties. This is why more needs to be done to en­cour­age them to stay.

This is ac­cord­ing to uro­log­i­cal sur­geon Dr Lall Sawh, who was one of two doc­tors ho­n­oured by the So­ci­ety of Sur­geons on Sat­ur­day night for their con­tri­bu­tions to the pro­fes­sion and their over 30 years of ser­vice to the so­ci­ety. The oth­er awardee was neu­ro­sur­geon, Dr Rasheed Adam.

Dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram com­mend­ed them for their ser­vice but al­so all the sur­geons in at­ten­dance.

“The na­tion owes you a debt of grat­i­tude for your (the ho­n­ourees’ ser­vice). To all of you who have de­cid­ed to stay in Trinidad and give back to the peo­ple, you have my pro­found re­spect and ad­mi­ra­tion,” he said.

Sawh de­scribed the mi­gra­tion of high­ly-skilled sur­geons out of the coun­try as a “very very bad brain drain.”

“The op­por­tu­ni­ties in Trinidad for young peo­ple in surgery are lim­it­ed and al­so the scope for ad­vance­ment is very lim­it­ed and a young, en­ter­pris­ing, ad­ven­tur­ous young man does not want to be shack­led by re­stric­tions here in Trinidad,” he said.

Sawh has in­ter­na­tion­al train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence but said he re­turned to Trinidad be­cause of the teach­ings his moth­er, a cane cut­ter, im­part­ed on her chil­dren- to give back to your coun­try’s peo­ple. De­spite his per­son­al choice, he said he does not look down on those who chose to leave.

“We have a lot of our boys who grad­u­at­ed from right here, who work right here, and are do­ing phe­nom­e­nal­ly well in the US and UK. I don’t blame them be­cause they have to look af­ter the de­vel­op­ment of their ca­reers,” he said.

The so­ci­ety’s pres­i­dent, Dr Camille Quan Soon, said it’s not an is­sue iso­lat­ed to just Trinidad and To­ba­go and ex­tends across the Caribbean re­gion.

The so­ci­ety’s oth­er ho­n­ouree, Dr Adam, held a sim­i­lar view to Sawh that there are no hard feel­ings against those who leave to ad­vance their ca­reer. How­ev­er, he does not be­lieve the mi­gra­tion is cur­rent­ly at a point that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly harm the coun­try.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get com­ments on the mat­ter from Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh but was un­suc­cess­ful.