The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) has ap­point­ed Zimbabwean medical doctor Dr. Rufaro Celestine as its Med­ical Chief of Staff (MCOS).

Ce­les­tine, who was born in Zim­bab­we, is cer­ti­fied in pae­di­atrics and der­ma­tol­ogy and has been a ful­ly reg­is­tered mem­ber of the Med­ical Board of T&T since 1989. She is al­so a mem­ber of their Spe­cial­ist Reg­is­ter in Pub­lic Health Med­i­cine.

She grad­u­at­ed in 1987 from the Roy­al Col­lege of Sur­geons in Ire­land. Fol­low­ing her in­tern­ships at the St. Luke’s Hos­pi­tal, Kilken­ny, Ire­land and the Port- of- Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, she em­barked on a ca­reer in hos­pi­tal pae­di­atrics, which in­clud­ed stints at the Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal in To­ba­go and the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal at Petrotrin.

Her in­ter­est in pub­lic health led her to re­turn to Ire­land to work with Dublin’s East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty in Com­mu­ni­ty and Pub­lic Health Med­i­cine, dur­ing which time she pur­sued a Mas­ter in Pub­lic Health Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin and a High­er Diplo­ma in med­i­cine in the field of Der­ma­tol­ogy.

She went on to as­sume the po­si­tion of Project Co­or­di­na­tor for the Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians in Ire­land be­fore re­turn­ing to Trinidad in 2004 when she es­tab­lished St Raphael’s Health Ser­vices Ltd., a med­ical cen­tre in Point Fortin.

Com­ment­ing on her ap­point­ment, Dr Ce­les­tine said, “I look for­ward to work­ing with the ex­cel­lent staff of the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in or­der to pro­vide a more ef­fi­cient pa­tient-cen­tered hos­pi­tal ser­vice.”

She was born in Zim­bab­we but spent her for­ma­tive years in the USA, UK and Swazi­land and be­came a cit­i­zen of T&T in 2012. She is mar­ried to Rudolph Ce­les­tine and en­joys play­ing sports in­clud­ing squash, ten­nis, golf and swim­ming, read­ing, mu­sic and trav­el.

The TRHA said it has wel­comed Ce­les­tine to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and to the is­land of To­ba­go and looks for­ward to work­ing with her to con­tin­u­ous­ly im­prove the lev­el of health­care pro­vid­ed at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

A state­ment said yes­ter­day that Dr Ru­faro Ce­les­tine as­sumed du­ty at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 2.

The Med­ical Chief of Staff pro­vides man­age­r­i­al and strate­gic di­rec­tion and over­sight to the med­ical team of the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

– Trinidad and Tobago Guardian