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Chairman of the Diabetic Foot Care Committee, Dr. Ingrid Cumberbatch, (left) along with some of the health care workers who received certificates today in Diabetic Foot Wound Management.???? Also pictured are (second left, to right) Staff Nurse at the Maurice Byer Polyclinic, Cheryl Jones; Staff Nurse at Branford Taitt Polyclinic, Viola Maison;?? course facilitator and Consultant Surgeon at the QEH, Selwyn Ferdinand; Staff Nurse at the Winston Scott Polyclinic, Pamela Cummings; and Clinical Medical Officer at the Maurice Byer Polyclinic, Dr. Delores Corbin.?? At center is Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Joy St. John. (C. Pitt/BGIS)

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Four Staff Nurses and four clinicians today received certificates upon completing the first Diabetic Foot Wound Management course, an effort by the Ministry of Health to prioritise diabetic foot care in Barbados.??
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This first course trained eight persons and a second module will begin next Tuesday, November 20.?? It is being taught by Consultant Surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), Selwyn Ferdinand, and will prepare an additional 25 persons from the public health sector, including from the QEH, to take a multi-disciplinary and preventative treatment approach to diabetic foot care.??

Foot complications are a serious and costly complication of diabetes, and according to Medical Officer of Health at the Winston Scott Polyclinic and Chairman of the Diabetes Foot Care Committee, Dr. Ingrid Cumberbatch, this strategic approach, will it is hoped, reduce amputation rates by 49 per cent.

The training she noted also complemented the Step by Step Foot Care??programme being run in the polyclinics to provide regular foot screening to persons living with diabetes, in an effort to detect at an early stage any changes which could lead to ulcers or other serious complications.

Approximately 200 amputations are done every year in Barbados, dubbed the amputation capital of the world.??

lisa.bayley@barbados.gov.bb

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