CCFP Linkletter Issue No.1 October 2009

A Letter from Trinidad and Tobago

Dear Colleagues

CCFP is preparing for its 4th Tri-Ennial Pan-Caribbean Conference -CCFP 2009- due to be held in Bridgetown , Barbados in November.

It is an exciting time for the planners who hope that this Conference will be as successful as the first three (3) in bringing Caribbean GP's and primary care health personnel together in yet another fascinating and welcoming Caribbean island-territory.

I want to share with you some memories of the 1st Conference -CCFP 2000.

It was the dream child of our then Regional President- Dr. Kamala Dickson- she is still with us in spirit- although now retired and returned to her part -birthplace, England.

CCFP teamed up with GPATT (the General Practitioners Association of Trinidad & Tobago) and the T&T Chapter of CCFP - represented by Dr. Anthony Chang-Kit and the UWI- Family Medicine Unit of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of UWI-St. Augustine Campus at Mt. Hope, represented by our own CAPCRG coordinator- Dr. Rohan Maharaj to work together to bring the whole thing off- with very little money in the kitty.

We met at the home of Dr. Norma Demas, widow of the redoubtable Caribbean icon - Mr. William Demas and we did our planning.

I pulled together all the volunteers I could get from my Office and my patients and I must recall two stalwarts who have since passed away- Mrs. Eleanore Moore- a formidable organiser and networker and our young pannist who played the National Anthem at our opening- who was so ill at the time with an incurable liver condition- but was so splendid at what she did that nobody knew. I negotiated a loan from the T&T Chapter of CCFP to start off as seed money and managed to get a grant from the Ministry of Health of T&T (Dr. Hamza Rafeek , then Minister of Health and an Alumnus of UWI) that repaid all our debts and left enough over that this money could have been invested and subsequently used to seed-fund the subsequent CCFP 2003 and CCFP 2006 conferences.

We did not attract as much of a local audience as we should have - for various reasons, but for those who attended, and they came from Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia and across the rest of the Caribbean- they still recall what a "gem" of a Conference it was- academically and socially. This is what we distilled from the feedback we got from our Evaluation forms.

Our guest speakers came from the University of Toronto, from WONCA and the CFPC- from the RCGP and from AAFP and they and their wives as well as our Caribbean colleagues and their spouses were treated Trini- style with gay abandon and elan.

To this day, “Reg” Dr. Reginald Perkins, then our WONCA Regional Americas Vice President, still speaks of learning to "crash a fete" in style and "bussing a lime".; Mary Sloper from Jamaica will share with you her learning experiences with "Moko Jumbie" and taking the maxi-taxis on the priority bus route between the campus at Mt. Hope and town (Port of Spain) and they all speak of the wealth of academic knowledge that was shared in an intimate small-group setting between students ("residents"), practitioners and professors/tutors. Confidence was gained by our CCFP members who presented original research and practice experiences in a professional and accomplished fashion. The College was handsomely sponsored as well by all the major Pharmaceutical companies who participated and exhibited. An innovative feature at this meeting was the involvement on the first afternoon of the Conference of Health-related NGO’s and patients and their families in the sessions as well as inclusion of topics related to Alternative Medicine under the auspices of PAHO and links onsite to Bireme and Med-Caribe through our University (UWI) Medical Library. A signal event on the last day of the Conference was the commissioning of the first website of the College http//www.caribgp.net which was developed as a collaborative effort between CAREC/PAHO and CCFP to facilitate our pilot project the Physician Based Sentinel Security System –PBSSS. The Report of this project was presented by the Program Coordinator, Dr. Robert Lee, now with PAHO in Washington to whom , along with our sustaining member, Dr. James Hospedales- then CAREC Director, now assigned to PAHO/WHO, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude.

It was a valuable experience for me in planning a Conference with little resources but realizing that if you made checklists and had timelines which you adhered to implicitly, and that if you delegated tasks properly and followed through, a little could go the distance.

My thanks goes out forever to those non-medical helpers- from my family for instance; to Dr. Demas- our so generous hostess and mentor; to Dr. Brader Brathwaite for assisting me with the timelines; to Eleanor "Ellie" Moore- dear departed- efficient and resourceful organizer; to Lorraine and Elton Pouchet of “inJoy Tours” – our social and tour directors; and to Dr. Yeonnie Whorms-John- one of our founder members and Rohan and Anthony who did their part so yeomanly, although only Anthony had the faith to believe that we could really pull it off.

We made influential friends in that Conference and gained valuable members - like our Dorothy- Dr. Pietersz-Janga from Curacao whom we met for the first time; and made contact again with territories that we thought we had lost- like Cayman Islands through Dr. Victor LookLoy.

The baton has been passed - first to Jamaica (2003), then to Bahamas(2006), and now on to Barbados- then where next?

Our young doctors who are joining must know that the sky is the limit- and that we have much to learn about ourselves and much to share.

I am excited and I hope that you all are.

Peace and Love brethren and sistren

Sonia Roache-Barker

Conference Organizer- CCFP 2000

Executive Director-CCFP and Past Regional President (1992-1996)

October 2009