The Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons (LCPS) has released an impressive data detailing a total of 142 medical and surgical specialists in Liberia.
This is in response to the country’s critical shortage of physicians and surgeons with this number making up 125 medical and surgical specialists who have been trained over the years with an additional newly trained 17 specialists.
The LCPS runs a post-graduate training in the four core medical disciplines of Internal Medicines, Surgery, Pediatrics and, Obstetrics and Gynecology.
According to data released by the college on the occasion marking its 8th Convocation held on Friday, September 13, 2024, at the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Ministerial Complex, training in those core areas commenced in October 2013 with a cohort of 19 first year students.
The operations of the College, like all other post-war institutions in the country, were affected by sundry intervening factors.
Pointedly, between September 2014 and June 2015, the College suspended its training as a result of the deadly Ebola crisis.
The institution lamented the demise of a faculty member in the Department of Internal Medicine and a resident of the Department of OB/GYN, who fell victim to the scourge of the deadly disease.
With an undaunted determination, the College recommenced training in July of 2015.
This assertive effort led to the graduation of the first cohort of 13 medical and surgical specialists, who were subsequently inducted into the membership of the Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Between 2017 and 2019, the College rolled out new residency programs in the faculties of Family Medicine, Ophthalmology, and Psychiatry.
The LCPS’s paper, that prior to the 1990 civil war, Liberia had developed a vibrant medical education system that attracted students from throughout West Africa and produced excellent clinicians and academicians.
Among the most profoundly negative and long lasting impacts of the Liberian Civil war (1990-2003) was the decimation of the country’s educational and health systems.
The onus then fell on some likeminded professionals to break the spell in meeting the health needs of the population.
It was in response to the country’s critical shortage of physicians and surgeons that give birth to the Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons through a Legislative Act on May 22, 2012.
It is cogently gathered that later that year, a technical working group set up by then Minister of Health, Walter T. Gwenigale and headed by then Chief Medical Officer Bernice Dahn, visited Ghana to under study the Ghanaian model of post-graduate medical residency training.
Meanwhile, the graduates have gone through the rigor, in the words of Professor Emmanuel Ezeome, of “aspiration and perspiration” to reach this new height.
It now remains to be seen whether policy makers will prioritize the healthcare of the nearly 4 million plus citizens by providing the necessary remunerations to the graduates, including reclassifying them from ‘generalists to specialists.’
Before its latest graduation, the LCPS had over the years rolled out 125 specialists and the graduation of additional 17 specialists in various core disciplines signals a nearly 12% increment in the number of specialists trained by the College to142.
