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 Health & Beauty | May 2007 
UMC Honors 30 Mexican Physicians
 Nathan Olivarez-Giles - Arizona Daily Star
| | UMC honored more than 30 Mexican physicians at Arizona Cancer Center at UMC North, Thursday, May 24, 2007. The Mexican physicians were instructors who have taught UA courses on cancer care to hundreds of other doctors in Mexico. Part of the event involved a tour of the cancer center. Here, a group of doctors checks out the modern lab facilities at the clinic. (Chris Richards/Arizona Daily Star) |
For more than 20 years, University Medical Center has participated in a project in which its doctors teach their Mexican counterparts about treatments for cancer and other health issues.
Since the continuing education collaboration began in 1986 with the Sonoran Secretariat of Health, UMC-educated Mexican doctors have gone on to train others in their country and other countries in Latin America, said Dr. Hugo Villar, chairman of the department of surgery and chief of surgical oncology at UMC.
When teaching others the advanced medical techniques they've learned, the Mexican doctors receive funding from organizations like the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Villar said.
"Twenty years ago, this was just a dream, but today it is a reality and the UMC and these doctors are the basis of it all," Villar said.
Thursday, UMC honored more than 30 Mexican doctors who are participating in the continuing-education program. The ceremony was held at the UMC North Arizona Cancer Center, 3838 N. Campbell Ave. The doctors had just completed a course on oncology management.
Among those honored at the event was Dr. Raymundo Lopez Vucovich, the secretary of health of the state of Sonora.
Lopez Vucovich said the continuing education of Mexican doctors by UMC is saving the lives of more women with cervical and breast cancers.
For many of the doctors from Mexico, it was their first visit to the new research and treatment center.
"I wish I could have one in my own country," said Dr. Eugenio Gomez of Hermosillo about the Arizona Cancer Center. "They have the resources here to do anything and to treat anything. It is a beautiful facility."
Visiting doctors were taken on a tour of the building before attending presentations on the prevention of cervical and uterine cancer and understanding breast cancer in Mexican and Mexican-American women.
After the presentations, the doctors were given awards for their participation in the program. The doctors will soon be taking classes on advanced pediatric, cardiac and trauma life support.
"I never thought I would have the opportunity to teach others when I was trying to become a doctor, but teaching others makes the clinical experience much more exciting," said Gomez, who has taken part in the program since its start.
The education exchange between Sonora and UMC has led to programs that have helped renovate hospitals along the border, said Marj Sisson, UMC director of outreach to Mexico.
In 1998, as a response to an influx of infants in need of emergency care being rushed from Agua Prieta, Sonora, to UMC, the hospital, with the help of Tucson Medical Center, created a new nursery at the general hospital in Agua Prieta, Sisson said.
Within one year of the new nursery's opening, infant mortality at the hospital dropped from 17 percent to 2 percent and since then, UMC sees "next to zero" infants being flown in from Agua Prieta, she said.
"The partnership the UMC has with doctors and hospitals in Mexico helped make the decrease in infant deaths in Agua Prieta possible," Sisson said.
When doctors in Sonora can treat their patients and don't have to worry about sending them to Tucson, it saves lives, time and money, said Gregory Pivirotto, UMC president and CEO.
"This is the way the border should work," Pivirotto said. "We make the border invisible when we share information and education like we do with this program and in the process we are making health care better for those who cross into the United States who are in need of emergency care and our American citizens in Mexico."
Contact reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles at nolivarezgiles@azstarnet.com. |
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