School of Medicine and Health Sciences Poster Presentations
A Medical Mission Trip to the Himalayas: Bhutan Cancer Registry
Poster Number
213
Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
3-2016
Abstract
Upon receiving the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences Health Services Scholarship, and a grant from the American Bhutanese Associates for Health (ABAH) foundation, the summer of 2014 was spent designing the Bhutan Cancer Registry project. The project is a digital cancer data registry designed to address the country’s need of surveillance on its growing prevalence of stomach cancer, and tailored to the unique requirements of the Bhutanese healthcare system. Two weeks were spent in the Kingdom of Bhutan assessing requirements for the registry by meeting with Bhutanese physicians and health policy officials at the local hospitals and the Royal Ministry of Health. The mission trip was enriched by many first hand experiences with the Bhutan’s unique healthcare system, such as their universal healthcare, traditional herbal medicine, basic health units, the strong influence of Buddhist compassion in their medical practices, and their growing need for medical equipment, especially in diagnostic radiology. The knowledge of the Bhutanese healthcare system was brought back to the United States, and implemented in a prototype of a digital cancer registry which was electronically delivered to Dr. Ugen Dophu, the Director General of Medical Services at Bhutan’s Ministry of Health. The general information about the Bhutanese healthcare system gathered during this mission trip was also presented to the United States Department of States and Project Health, an NGO, to help move forward ABAH’s humanitarian efforts to obtain donations of medical equipment to Bhutan.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Open Access
1
A Medical Mission Trip to the Himalayas: Bhutan Cancer Registry
Upon receiving the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences Health Services Scholarship, and a grant from the American Bhutanese Associates for Health (ABAH) foundation, the summer of 2014 was spent designing the Bhutan Cancer Registry project. The project is a digital cancer data registry designed to address the country’s need of surveillance on its growing prevalence of stomach cancer, and tailored to the unique requirements of the Bhutanese healthcare system. Two weeks were spent in the Kingdom of Bhutan assessing requirements for the registry by meeting with Bhutanese physicians and health policy officials at the local hospitals and the Royal Ministry of Health. The mission trip was enriched by many first hand experiences with the Bhutan’s unique healthcare system, such as their universal healthcare, traditional herbal medicine, basic health units, the strong influence of Buddhist compassion in their medical practices, and their growing need for medical equipment, especially in diagnostic radiology. The knowledge of the Bhutanese healthcare system was brought back to the United States, and implemented in a prototype of a digital cancer registry which was electronically delivered to Dr. Ugen Dophu, the Director General of Medical Services at Bhutan’s Ministry of Health. The general information about the Bhutanese healthcare system gathered during this mission trip was also presented to the United States Department of States and Project Health, an NGO, to help move forward ABAH’s humanitarian efforts to obtain donations of medical equipment to Bhutan.
Comments
Presented at: GW Research Days 2016