By Eulalee Thompson, Staff ReporterTODAY WE continue to profile the 2003 nominees for the prestigious Gleaner Honour Award. Dr. Peter Figueroa is the nominee for Health.
One thing that can be said for certain about Dr. Peter Figueroa - he is no pushover. He is not afraid to stand against the tide, putting his point of view squarely on the table. For instance, he was not afraid in August 1997, to weigh in on the side of allowing condom distribution among prisoners, although the trade union for the prison warders, the University and Allied Workers' Union (UAWU), created a big hullabaloo over the issue. It was afraid and ashamed to admit that prisoners, in all-male prisons, were actually engaging in sexual acts, practising homosexuality in prisons.
It was Dr. Peter Figueroa again who has been publicly advocating the decriminalisation of homosexuality, again facing the criticism of this generally homophobic society. Also, he has been calling for the decriminalisation and regulation of prostitution, a suggestion that make Christians and other puritans shudder.
"I have always wanted to make a difference... I am interested in changing things for the better. I am not really interested in maintaining the status quo," Dr. Figueroa, currently the Health Ministry's Chief of Epidemiology and AIDS, told The Gleaner recently.
This strong desire to make a difference is really not one of Dr. Figueroa's new character traits; it dates way back to his school days at St. George's College in Kingston and to his time at the University of the West Indies, Mona, St Andrew. As a young medical student in the late 1960s to 1970s and specifically as president of the Medical Students' Association, he was an outstanding participant in meetings in the Faculty of Medicine that sought to allow medical students and doctors to wear shirt jackets as acceptable dress mode instead of the then required staid necktie and white coat. He, with student colleagues, won the battle, and today, the shirt jacket is still one of Dr. Figueroa's trademarks. He wears his shirt jackets almost everywhere.
This confirmed student activist, imbued with the idealism of youth, became involved in the leftist student movement the Abeng group and the (communist) Workers' Party of Jamaica, eventually becoming a member of its central committee. As a result of his involvement in the leftist movement which was quite fashionable in the '70s, he was for several years denied a visa to travel to the United States of America. It's all water under the bridge now.
ACTIVIST TREND
Continuing his activist trend, having qualified as a medical doctor, Peter Figueroa soon organised the Junior Doctors' Association (JDA) as a splinter group of the Medical Assoc-iation of Jamaica (MAJ). He was its president from 1976 to 1980 and lobbied to improve the conditions of work for junior doctors.
"You see, our parents brought us up to have an impact. We were taught to think independently. Our father ( Professor John Figueroa, educator, poet and journalist), was a remarkable man. Because he was an educator, a university professor... he travelled a lot and saw himself as a man of the Caribbean and of the world," said Dr. Figueroa.
Dr. Figueroa recalled that during his childhood, he and his six siblings would sit on the family's verandah, along with his parents and their guests (mainly other university lecturers), while they were having discussions. He said it was significant that all the children "could participate in the discussions and could think and have their own points of view."
It was from then that this young mind (and the minds of his siblings) was being moulded with a strong sense of social justice and the important guiding mantra to live a life that makes a difference. His siblings are all making a difference in their careers and so is Dr. Figueroa.
PRE-CLINICAL STUDIES
During his pre-clinical studies, he was one of three students who won the anatomy prize, earning a one-year scholarship to the United Kingdom where he read physiology at Bristol University. He completed medical school in 1972 with distinction in pathology and microbiology and honours in obstetrics, gynaecology and anatomy. He won several prizes in medicine, junior surgery, paediatrics and shared the prize in social and preventive medicine.
Dr. Figueroa said that he was always interested in public health, although he had the talent for individual patient care and most people thought that he would have gone into internal medicine. He, however, pursued postgraduate training in public health, eventually moving to the Ph.D. level, in the late 1980s, researching a thesis on the epidemiology of HIV and HTLV-1 infection among the heterosexual STD clinic attenders in Jamaica.
This interest in public health and his training made him the Ministry of Health's epidemiologist in the late 1980s into the 1990s, and he moved up from Senior Medical Officer to Chief Medical Officer in 1997. He developed a special interest in HIV/AIDS research and surveillance.
"Once this epidemic came, I could see it was going to be a major challenge and pandemic. I was the epidemiologist and I could sense that this immediately would overwhelm us ... and many people are still in denial about the condition," he said.
With his colleagues in epidemiology, he pioneered many internationally-recognised 'best practice' approaches to slow the progress of the local HIV epidemic. He advocated, for instance, that HIV monitoring and control be integrated with that of other sexually-transmitted diseases and for 'double protection' - the promotion of condom-use alongside other effective family planning methods.
He has published numerous scientific works in and outside of his area of focus, HIV/AIDS, and sits on many local and international committees, where his expertise in AIDS research is well recognised. He is listed in the recent publication, Profiles of Some Eminent Jamaican Scientists.
