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CARICOM Salutes Bahamas Chief Medical Officer

Greater Georgetown, Guyana – Bahamas Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Merceline Dahl-Regis has been given high commendations by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), for having received the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) Annual Award for excellence in health administration.

The PAHO Award for Administration 2009 is given to a candidate who has made significant contribution to national and regional health development through the management or execution of health services and programmes, teaching and research.

Dr Dahl-Regis earned the award for her contribution to health care management, research and medical education in primary health care. The PAHO Award Committee, comprising three representatives from member Governments of the Executive Committee, cited her leadership in institutionalising public health surveillance across the Bahamas, and in evaluating and re-defining the parameters for the Caribbean Cooperation on Health as “inspirational…”

Dr Dahl-Regis, a graduate of the University of the West Indies and Johns Hopkins University, USA, was selected from a field of nominees submitted by Member Governments of PAHO through their Ministries of Health. The award was given at a special reception held in Washington, DC, on September 29, 2009, during a meeting of the 49th Directing Council of the PAHO. Currently serving as a member of the Steering Committee for the proposed Caribbean Public Health Authority (CARPHA), Dr Dahl-Regis had also served as one of the initial members of the Executive Body of the Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP), as well as a former member of the Regional Coordinating Mechanism (RCM) for PANCAP.

As CMO for the Bahamas, she has been instrumental in revamping the public health clinic system and in introducing non-medical administrators in clinics, thereby releasing nurses and doctors from the performance of administrative duties, allowing them to focus on delivering health care. She has also created a maternal and child health unit to reduce the infant mortality rate and re-establishing midwives clinics to provide continuity of care to pregnant women in that country.

Previously, she was appointed Fellow at the Child Development Centre, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Howard University College of Medicine in Washington; Resident in Paediatrics at the District of Columbia General Hospital and Howard University Hospital and Senior House Officer at the Department of Paediatrics at Princess Margaret Hospital in the Bahamas.

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