Ganesh Persaud, a young and vibrant medical professional originally from Essequibo, is Guyana’s first embryologist and is set to head the In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) Lab at the privately operated Dr Balwant Singh Hospital.
Persaud will head the lab under the supervision of Guyana’s only infertility specialist, Dr Madhu Singh.
Embryology is the field of medicine concerned with the study and development of embryos.
At the age of 17, Persaud moved to Georgetown in order to study at the University of Guyana. He completed his Bachelor’s in Medical Technology and then began working at the Dr Balwant Singh Hospital Laboratory, where he worked for six years and later became its Head of the Laboratory.
After working with the visiting embryologists at the institution and also doing preparations for the infertility procedures at the hospital, he was inspired to specialise in this field and therefore applied to the hospital for a scholarship, which he received.
He completed his training at the Craft Hospital and Research Centre in Kerala, India. As a specialist, he returned from India a few weeks ago with the ambition to help grow the lab tremendously over the coming years.
The vision of the hospital is to become the largest Infertility Centre in the Caribbean.
Persaud advises that “patients who are not getting pregnant with simple treatments like clomiphene move on to more advanced treatments like intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilisation.” IVF is a process whereby fertilisation of an egg and sperm is completed in the laboratory after the eggs have been harvested by the gynaecologist.
Persaud noted, “Dr Madhu’s infertility clinic has brought relief to many Guyanese and is now frequented by patients from neighbouring countries like Suriname, among others.” He further said, “The success rates produced by the clinic are on par with that of the clinics in Barbados and Trinidad, and the price is a fraction of that being quoted at those clinics.” He is moreover optimistic that with his help, “the IVF lab will continue to grow and eventually become the largest in the Caribbean.”
