Growing as young boy in Industry on the East Coast Demerara, Teekah Singh was bullied because of his body image as a young boy.
Today, Singh recently underwent Bariatric surgery at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) to deal with his weight.

Singh received his education at the Cummings Lodge Secondary School and told the the Pepperpot Magazine that he was had extra weight as a child.
“Since as a little child growing up, I am growing with the size, so the weight keeps growing higher and higher. It was almost 402lbs. We did a lot of tests and so and at the time of the surgery my total body mass index was 402lbs,” he said. “When I did the surgery the next morning I was up and walking. I spent almost six to seven days in the hospital for them to do the checking up to make sure everything was okay and then I came home.”
Singh disclosed that before undergoing the surgery, he had great confidence in the medical team that was conducting the surgery for a condition called Laparoscopic bariatric surgery.

“Dr Ramcharran and his team were really good. They built my motivation with the interest they showed for the first six months before the surgery. While they put me on the diet, they called and find out how I am doing, and how the diet was going that they put me on, and I was called every two weeks and did checkups to determine how the test and diet performed its function,” he explained. “So, on the day of the surgery, I was asked if I am afraid and I said no, because I had already built confidence in myself and the medical teams ‘ability to perform the surgery.”

Just recently, the Guyana Chronicle Newspaper dated March 31, 2022, it was reported that Bariatric surgery could be done laparoscopically or open. Laparoscopic means making five small incisions, putting the camera in, putting the instruments in and then the surgery is carried out through the small incisions.

While the surgery was done openly before, this is the first laparoscopic surgery to be done at GPHC and in Guyana.
“With bariatric surgery, the patient is expected to lose half of their body weight at six months and three-quarters of their body weight in one year and they are usually able to keep this weight off once they follow the guidelines and the diet,” Dr Ramcharran told the Guyana Chronicle in a recent interview.

Meanwhile, Kishore Ramdass, one of the Doctors who performed the surgery on Teekah Singh explained to Pepperpot Magazine, the intricate details of the surgery and its procedures.

“Bariatric surgery, the first of this kind of surgery done in Guyana at Georgetown Hospital too, it basically is a minimal access surgery so minimal incisions, so you can rest the stomach so that the patient can reduce the number of calories the person can intake and usually this type of surgery is for persons who would have exhausted other methods of losing weight. The usual Body Mass Index of a person is 20 -25. Beyond that is considered as obesity,”Dr Ramdass told the Pepperpot Magazine.

Ramdass urged the general public to utilise the services of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
“There are may good things in all the departments at the GPHC, time and time again and the people who work here , they would know , but sometimes we are so busy that we barely have time for publicity, but not everything that happens here is negative,” Ramdass noted during his interview .