Belize Host Annual Medical Oncology Mission

The Belize Cancer Center Dangriga and the Belize Cancer Society have once again, collaborated with the New York based organization, InterVol, to host the annual Medical Oncology Mission in Belize. Since the fifteenth of April, a team of four oncologists has been working with doctors and patients in Dangriga and Belize City to offer their services and expertise in the field. News Five’s Britney Gordon visited the Belize Cancer Society today to meet the team and learn more about the mission. Here’s the story.

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

Founded in 1989 in Rochester, New York, InterVol is an organization dedicated to providing medical supplies and equipment to developing countries. Each year, the organization collects and ships more than eighty-five tons of equipment to countries in dire need of them. The organization has since expanded to provide healthcare across the world by sending teams of doctors to offer their services. Since 2018, Belize has been one of the countries that InterVol has partnered with for this endeavor. Through the Belize Cancer Society and Belize Cancer Center in Dangriga, InterVol has spent the last several days providing care and assistance for cancer patients in the country.

 

Dellone Pescascio, C.E.O., Belize Cancer Center Dangriga

“We have a clinical oncology team from Interval, which is it’s a team of five providers four of which are on oncologist, hematologist. They’re visiting from Rochester, New York, and they’ve been visiting us in Belize since about 2018. The purpose of the mission really is an expansion on the provision of care. Oncology services to those patients in Belize that otherwise, have been diagnosed but just needed to have some provider consultation.  And then the other part of that is an establishment of, appropriate treatment plans for these patients that are waiting for treatment. We actually operated this time. Dangriga at the Dangriga Cancer Center. And then this is or on Thursday today, we are operating out of the Belize Cancer Society building to provide those clinical services here.”

 

Leading the team of oncologists is Doctor Saad Jamshed, who specializes in hematology. He said that this mission is one that he is grateful to be a part of each year so that he can share his knowledge and offer his service to patients with limited access.

 

Dr. Saad Jamshed, Lead Oncologist

“So it dates back to many years. InterVol is one of the volunteer organizations we have in Rochester Regional Health, and we have been coming here and doing different medical camps since the late 2000s. I got involved in coming to the cancer center in 2018.  There was a little bit of a gap during covert  traveling was difficult, but coming here and seeing patients has been very rewarding. The team here does a phenomenal job of providing care to patients. It’s difficult. We see the challenges patients face. They in and day out that delays the experience two different barriers that they have of all the way from screening, being able to conduct the testing and being able to afford all the care that they need and to be able to be a cancer survivor takes a lot. both not only in the patient, but on the family and multiple stressors. So the team does a nice job over here and providing care locally because I can imagine otherwise it would be difficult to provide all that care here within Belize itself. Without the Cancer Center and Doctor Grant and Sister Dellone.”

 

Also on the team were doctors Roxana Vlad-Vonica, a prostate cancer specialist and Vatsana Govind Kirtani, who specializes in breast cancer. They explained that working in a different country can be challenging at times, but it’s worth the effort to meet and assist the patients.

 

Dr. Roxana Vlad-Vonica, Oncology Specialist

“To come here was not so difficult. To be able to provide the care that we are used with in the state to the patients here seems to be more challenging for different reason, again, transportation, funding, distance it’s different, but that’s the reason we are here, because we are trying to narrow the gap as much as we can.”

 

Dr. Vatsana Govind Kirtani, Oncology Specialist

“I will say something I found actually very encouraging that every patient that I’ve seen is actually very involved with their health care. They know a lot about themselves. They know about their medication. We get really good and reliable history, and I think that involvement of community for themselves is the first step and they have it down. So that’s great. And I think we can build from there at this point.”

 

President of the Belize Cancer Society, Kim Simplis-Barrow, expressed her gratitude TO InterVol for the assistance and joining the Belize Cancer Society and the Belize Cancer Center Dangriga’s initiative to ensure that citizens have access to affordable, quality, and effective, cancer care services.

 

Kim Simplis Barrow, President, Belize Cancer Society

“For us, it’s still very important to have a collaboration and partnership with the Belize Cancer Society Cancer Center, Dangriga and with Interval. It’s such a great collaboration and partnership there. Today, I think we’re seeing about twenty-one patients just here at the center. They have been here for over the past four days and so in Dangriga, they were seeing patients as well. It is an opportunity that perhaps some of our Belizeans would not have had and it’s always good to get a second opinion and to have a dialogue with professional oncologists.”

 

Britney Gordon for News Five.