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Heartline Magazine April - June 2003
Second Caribbean Conference in Emergency Cardiac Care
On Sunday 27th July 2003, the Second Caribbean Conference in
Emergency Cardiac Care (ECC) was held in Kingston, Jamaica under the auspices of
the Heart Foundation of Jamaica and that country's Ministry of Health. It was
dedicated to the late Dr. Beverley Grant-Lewis whose timeless efforts in
Emergency Cardiac Care in Jamaica were well recognized. A presentation was made
to Dr. Edward Chung, who had the original vision of emergency cardiac care in
Jamaica.
This conference marked the beginning of a strenuous week of
training for several Jamaican ECC instructors in both Basic and Advanced Cardiac
Life Support. These instructors had been teaching for years but were now to be
upgraded to American Heart Association (AHA) and international standards and
become certified as AHA instructors.
For this purpose a team of Instructor Trainers from Barbados
travelled to Jamaica. The Barbados team comprised Dr. Brian Charles (director of
the Heart Foundation of Barbados (HFOB) ECC programme), who was the programme
co-ordinator in Jamaica. Dr. Rowena Ahyee-Hallsworth, Mr. Errol Maynard and Mrs.
Gina Pitts (project co-ordinator of the HFOB's ECC programme). Mr. Maynard was
Senior BLS instructor of the training sessions.
All of the members of the Barbados team are volunteers of
the Heart Foundation of Barbados, and are all InterAmerican Heart Foundation and
American Heart Association Instructors and Instructor Trainers.
The InterAmerican Heart Foundation has had one National
Resuscitation Council (NRC) in the Caribbean, the NRC of Barbados. Expanding the
Chain of Survival through the Caribbean, Jamaica is now welcomed as a second
Caribbean NRC. A group of four people who will play tremendous pivotal roles in
moving the process forward were also in Jamaica for the conference. These were
Professor Trevor Hassell, a Barbadian, who is President-Elect of the
InterAmerican Heart Foundation; Mrs. Beatrix Champagne, Executive Director of
the InterAmerican Heart Foundation; Mrs. Beth Cooper, Senior Manager,
International Training of the American Heart Association, and Ms. Wanda Miranda,
the American Heart Association's ECC training co-ordinator for Latin America and
the Caribbean.
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