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UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 4TH OCTOBER, 2015
RESEARCH
It was January 1996,
one of the coldest months in a
particularly cold year, when Dilip Dan ventured from the
Caribbean for the first time. He’d applied for a position
at the State University of New York in Buffalo. Dressed in
light shoes, thin gloves and a borrowed overcoat, he was
confronted with minus 23° weather. He was confronted
with naysayers at the university; black and brown people
like himself who told him he would not get the position.
“Well if that’s the case, I thought, I’mall the way up in
Buffalo, I’m going to Niagara Falls,” he recounts.
He took a bus to the Falls, where it was colder still,
and the wind cut right through his borrowed coat. But
he endured, staring into the chasm where the hundreds
of thousands of cubic feet of water thundered down
unrelentingly, a true force of nature. After all – and
unbeknownst to the naysayers – he was a force himself.
He did get the position and went on to excel at the
post, as he has in every post since. From the beginning
of his medical career to today, Professor Dan has been so
successful and his contribution to Caribbean medicine
so impactful, that at 46, he is a Senior Medical Officer,
Professor of Surgery and Head of the Department of
Clinical and Surgical Sciences at The UWI.
The Doctor’s Doctor
Of the professorship (he was promoted in July of this
year), Professor Dan says, “to obtain this academic status
at this age is a privilege. I am privileged and honoured.”
On his promotion in August 2015 to department
head he’s a bit more measured:
“It’s work, more work, phone calls and challenges,”
he laughs. “But I’m still enjoying it. It’s a new era for me
because I’m a clinician. I’m a surgeon. I love to operate.
Administration has not beenmy forte. It’s a challenge and
I am embracing it.”
It’s not that achieving a senior administrative position
hasn’t been one of his goals. It just happened sooner than
he expected.
“You look at these types of positions as something
you aspire to as you grow in the field and say one day I
can achieve that position and make a change, make a
contribution. I thought it would happen later in life but
the opportunity came up and I decided I would accept it.”
Professor Dan’s accomplishments as a surgeon and
his contribution to the surgical practice in the region
through education and training are the catalysts for his
rapid rise. He is a Caribbean pioneer in both laparoscopic
surgery (a surgical method thatmakes only small incisions
in the body and uses optics to view the interior) and
bariatric surgery (anti-obesity surgery that reduces the
size of the stomach through various methods). He has
trained surgeons throughout the region and introduced
anddevelopedUWI’s doctorate inmedicine in the surgery
programme. If you know anyone in Trinidad and Tobago
who has received laparoscopic surgery it is possible that
Professor Dan has trained the surgeon.
“I decided this was something that Trinidad needs,”
he says of his choice of specialisation.“I was always intent
on coming back [from the US]. So I insisted that I find a
fellowship for subspecialty training. I got a fellowship at
Providence Hospital [Howard affiliated] in Washington
DC, so I went down and started laparoscopic surgery.”
He says, “When I came back the skill wasn’t in
existence in the Caribbean except in miniscule amounts.
I started teaching surgeons how to do these procedures.
I started teaching at San Fernando General, then Port of
Spain, then Tobago, then Sangre Grande [hospitals], and
then privately, at all the different institutions. I think it is
important that we give back. You are not here and given
opportunities for yourself. I don’t think I learned the skill
for me. I learned the skill and decided to come back for
the Caribbean.”
Surgical
Precision
The daring ambition
of
DILIPDAN
B Y J O E L H E N R Y
Professor Dilip Dan receives the Hummingbird Medal Gold from President Anthony Carmona while Mrs Reema Carmona stands ready to
greet him at the National Awards Ceremony in August 2015.
I want to see this metabolic surgery take off and to be able to help these patients with diabetes on a larger scale.
PHOTOS: ALVA VIARRUEL
