By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
The President of the West African College of Physicians (WACP), Sierra Leone chapter, Dr. Durodamil Radcliff Lisk says he has received excellent results from primary examination in various faculties for the first time and that in the last exams held in March this year, Sierra Leone got the highest pass rate of about 70 percent in internal medicine, more than Ghana with 60 percent and Nigeria 68 percent.
Dr. Lisk disclosed the developments at WACP’s 7th general and scientific meeting, held at in Freetown on Saturday 11th June 2022. Discussion focused on the theme for this year’s meeting: ‘Living with COVID-19.’
’Sierra Leone and Ghana sent the same number of candidates to the exams,’’ he said.
He pointed that, other faculties also recorded good passes. He also spoke of how the college has grown from paper based to computer based testing which he said is the way their exams were conducted in Nigeria and Uganda.
He said it is a bit gratifying that the Sierra Leone chapter of the body has continued with the annual meeting since it started 8 years ago. He said the gathering has grown from 20 participants at the first meeting at Bamoi hotel then, to over a hundred participants currently.
A representative from Internal Medicine Faculty, Dr. Sulaiman Lakoh, whilst presenting a paper on ‘Covid-19 and its impact on health service utilization’ noted that there are 534 million infections globally, with the African continent alone having approximately 12 million deaths, which accounted for 2.2 percent of the global infections. He mentioned that out of that global figure, 255,000 deaths have so far been reported in the continent.
He pointed that, as part of the COVID research method, they did an analysis on its related matters and realized that African has the lowest case fatality compared to other continents.
‘’This lowest fatality rate is as a result of what we refer to as Covid paradox,’’ he said.
Dr. Lakkoh said that in an assessment done in 2020 on national Covid youth health survey, it was realized prevalence in Africa was said to be lower than that of European countries and the Americas.
He said when the response started they decided to tap various areas where patients can be managed in hospitals settings. He noted that there are locations where suspected patients can be isolated from those that are in treatment centres.
He highlighted that Connaught hospital being a referral facility has an isolation centre and 34 military hospital a Covid treatment centre. He said that the case fatality at 34 hospital was 18. 9 percent from the infected population, whilst the case fatality at Connaught’s isolation centre, was nearly 50 percent.
In his presentation on ‘Living with COVID-19; the perspective of Paediatrics, Dr. Freddie Coker pointed that developing countries are the least affected in the past two years the world has suffered on issues of COVID-19. He noted that children were the less affected by the pandemic, which he said did not give them assurance of being spared the mortality and mobility impact. He further said that children remain to be the largest victims of the pandemic.
‘’There are serious socio- economic impact on child survival which were more profound during the first part of the pandemic,’’ he said.
Dr. Coker pointed that more 10 million child bride would emerge during the next decade as a result of the pandemic. He also stated that more children were pushed into poverty as a result of the pandemic.
The West African College of Physicians is a professional society, founded in 1976, for medical specialists in West African sub-region. Its mission is to improve the health of West Africans through excellence in training of medical specialists and the provision of high quality health.
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (13/06/22)
