UG alumnus gets Congressional Recognition in US for excellence in health care
Monday, December 31, 2018 - 18:18A son of the soil, Dr. Keith Cummings, has been recognized for an outstanding award in New York, United States of America.
Dr. Cummings, a graduate of the University of Guyana [UG], was recognized for excellence in Health Care in the Brooklyn Hospital Center, and for outstanding and invaluable service to the East New York Community. He was, moreover, recently the recipient of a certificate of special congressional recognition from Congressman Hakeem Jeffries.
Jeffries is an American lawyer and Democratic member of the US House of Representatives, representing New York’s 8th Congressional District in Brooklyn and Queens.
Dr. Keith D. Cummings with his Congressional Recognition certificate
The Congressman has been among those who have recognized Dr. Cummings for providing high quality health care to the patients and the community he serves. He has also been singled out for providing free health coaching for chronic diseases to the underserved in the East New York Community.
Although he has been living abroad for many years, Dr. Cummings has remained a strong supporter of the local national university’s School of Medicine and Library, through generous book and journal donations over the past three years.
It all started back in 2016 when he handed over some US$30,000 in up-to-date medical journals and books to the university’s Learning Resource Centre. The university had announced, through its Director of the School of Medicine, Dr. Ronald Aaron, that the ‘highly reputable’ items were donated for the sole purpose of boosting the resources in the Faculty of Health Sciences. He’d revealed that the journals contain research from 2013 to 2016, and that they will be of use to students as well as lecturers.
Dr. Cummings had revealed then too that it was a herculean task to secure the most recent journals, so that the Guyanese students and lecturers could be able to have access to the same updated information that is used by any US physician. He noted that he endeavoured to achieve this, since he is of the view that it should be a priority to have high quality, evidence-based information available in such publications.
The UG alumnus was also instrumental in sourcing an up-to-date software system for the Health Sciences Faculty that allows users to access the latest possible medical research online. Through this avenue, he said, the university will have the ability to access any information that top schools in the US have. Dr. Cummings had also committed to paying a sum of US$7,000 for the service for the next five year [2016-2018] which represented another crucial contribution to the university.
The UG alumnus had also committed to providing a shipment of books in 2016 towards the further development of the university’s Research Centre valued at some US$15,000.
In addition to his support to the university, Dr. Cummings has also been a regular provider of Continuous Medical Education [CME] to many doctors in Linden, Georgetown and Berbice over the years.