|
Miguel Lugones Botell,
MD
Winner of the Grand
Prize in MEDICC’s Reproductive Health Research and Writing
Competition
Dr. Lugones, specialist in obstetrics and
gynecology, practices at a community polyclinic in Havana
and is a member of the Child and Adolescent Gynecology Section
of the Cuban Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics. (Click
here for his award-winning article Child and
Adolescent Gynecological Services in Primary Care.)
Dr.
Miguel Lugones (second from right) and his prize-winning
team of co-authors.
|
|
MR: Your research has been
developed out of your experience with child and adolescent
gynecological services. How long have these specialized services
been available in Cuba?
ML: The child and adolescent section of
Cuba’s Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics was founded
in the mid 1990’s by professor Jorge Mendoza, and
I was also one of its founders. Its goal was, and still
is, to give specialized, differentiated and multidisciplinary
care to female children and adolescents. On the first day
we opened our service at the polyclinic, only one patient
came in. We kept our doors open, offering the service every
two weeks, and one or two patients would come. But as time
passed, we received young women and girls more frequently,
and nowadays we have a weekly service, attending to 20 to
25 patients each time.
The main reason these patients come to see us have to do
with reproductive health: advice and clinical examinations
concerning birth control, abortion, menstrual regulations,
gynecological infectious processes, STI’s, etc. These
issues are important for these teens—not only for
their immediate future, but also as they move into maturity.
MR: Since the teens can also
seek out gynecologists at the hospital level, what is the
advantage of providing these services at the community level?
ML: Primary care’s main objective
is prevention and health promotion, and that’s the
best context for these kinds of doctor’s visits. And
it’s at an early age when prevention has its best
chance for success. We can work with these young patients
to prevent unwanted pregnancies, thus also avoiding the
health risk of abortion; and we can help prevent sexually-transmitted
infections and other kinds of complications. We also work
with the families, especially with the mothers, maintaining
active parents’ participation in general.
The teens we work with tend to keep using birth control
once they start, and I believe this is because we give them
detailed explanations of their options for contraception,
and their parents are most often involved as well, as I
explained.
MR: Tell us about your current
research projects…
ML: It seems I’m always involved
in a piece of research. The fields I’m most interested
in are at opposite ends of women’s life spectrum:
I work in both adolescent gynecology and on health issues
related to women beginning, during and after menopause.
Right now, I’m working o a study of comprehensive
health care for women approaching menopause, which I hope
to present at the World Sexology Congress in March, 2003.
MR: Once more, congratulations
on your prize-winning work.
ML: Please allow me to congratulate MEDICC
for your initiative in starting and carrying out these competitions,
which are an innovation in Cuba, and offer an incentive
to all health professionals, especially those of us in primary
care, to write and publish and leave a written testimony
of our work. 
|
Interviews Index 