THE second edition of the Texila American University (TAM) International Conference is set for Thursday and Friday at the institution’s Providence, East Bank Demerara location.
The conference will be held under the theme: “Non-communicable Diseases (NCD) in the Caribbean Region: Current Scenario and Future Perspectives”.

Minister of Public Health Volda Lawrence; PAHO/WHO Representative for the Guyana Country Office, Dr. William Adu-Krow; and Chair of the Presidential National Non Communicable Disease Commission – Guyana (PNNCDC-G), Dr. Holly Alexander are scheduled to be among the local speakers at the two-day conference.

The international speakers include Dr. Matthias Schmidt, MD, Research Director of Diagnostic Radiology at Dalhousie University; Dr. Chen Howard, from Tufts University Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences; and Dr. Rajendran JC Bose, Biomedical and Translational Medical Researcher.

Other local speakers scheduled to speak at the conference include Dr Kumar Sukhraj, Head of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) Diabetic Foot Centre; Dr. Sayan Chakraborty, Radiation Oncologist at the Cancer Institute of Guyana; Dr. Shanti Anthony, Former Director for the Department of Disease Control; Dr Mahendra Carpen, Consultant Cardiologist at the Caribbean Heart Institute; and Public Relations Specialist, Alex Graham.
The international conference was initiated with intent to help medical students broaden their knowledge and have a better understanding of internationally accepted concepts and practices. Last year the conference was hosted under the theme ‘Enriching the Caribbean Medical Education through Research’.

This year the institution chose to focus on NDCs to bring about awareness to the issue.
In Guyana, NCD account for some 70 percent of deaths annually, with the country loosing many of its citizens to diabetes, cancer, heart diseases and chronic respiratory diseases. “Non-Communicable disease is a major public health problem globally as well as in the Caribbean region. The conference is intended to create awareness among healthcare providers, consumers and stakeholders on pervasiveness of NDCs, in a bid to make an effort to find evidence-based solutions which are proven to be effective in the region,” a statement from TAM said.

A United States headquartered institution, TAM opened a branch of its medical school in Guyana in 2011, offering health science programmes. In 2017 the school moved into a new US$20 million five acres campus in Providence on the East Bank of Demerara.