DR. Amanda King of St Lucia is the new president of The Caribbean Association for Rheumatology (CAR).
She was elected last weekend during the 7th. annual CAR scientific meeting held in Trinidad and Tobago.
The other members of the executive are: Vice President –Dr. Christophe Deligny of Martinique; Secretary–Dr. Sharon Dowell of Washington D.C.; Treasurer–Dr. Lynda Tilluckdharry of Trinidad.
Two additional directors were elected in the persons of Professor Nigel Harris and Dr. Vincent Nwosa (Bahamas) to serve alongside the existing directors areDr. Amanda King, Dr. Cleopatra Altenor and Dr. Marie Grandison Didier.
The meeting was attended by rheumatologists from the Caribbean and the diaspora committed to CAR’s mission of improving the care of Caribbean patients with rheumatic diseases through collaboration, education, research and advocacy.
There was also an educational session for General Practitioners and Internists in an effort to encourage early accurate diagnosis of rheumatic diseases and appropriate referral to the rheumatologist. Shared care, with the aim of treating to a target of remission or low disease activity using a patient centred approach, was also emphasized.
The keynote speaker was Professor Harris, Vice Chancellor Emeritus, University of the West Indies, currently Chancellor of the University of Guyana. He spoke on “The origins and evolution of The Antiphospholipid syndrome”, a rheumatologic disease he helped describe in 1984 and for which he devised a diagnostic test the anticardiolipin test, one of the most important discoveries in rheumatology in the last 40 years.