Welcome
Welcome to the UAB Department of Pathology website. The UAB Department of Pathology provides extensive clinical services and teaching while maintaining large and productive research programs. Currently, the Department has over $20 million per year in extramural research funding and our clinical services, including inpatient, outpatient and outreach, completes over 6 million procedures per year. Our training programs are among the finest in the country and our faculty have achieved national and international recognition in service, teaching and research.
UAB Pathology News
Pathologists Travel to Ghana
Dr. Richard Powers has joined Dr. Peter Anderson as Department of Pathology faculty who are involved with promoting pathology education in developing countries of Africa. Dr. Powers has recently made several trips to the west African nation of Ghana to lecture on neurodegenerative diseases, neuropathology and neuropsychiatry. The educational mission was organized by Dr. Thaddeus Ulzen who is the interim dean of the College of Community Health Sciences in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Powers has been using teaching materials developed during his tenure as the UAB clinical neuroscience course master to train physicians and medical students in Ghana, a nation of 26 million citizens. Dr. Powers was teaching at Ghana’s new medical school at the University of Cape Coast and he had the opportunity to educate the first two classes who will graduate from the school as well as provide clinical education at the state psychiatric hospital which is outside Cape Coast. Although American physicians often believe that infectious diseases like malaria and yellow fever are the major health challenges in Africa, the healthcare leadership of African nations with stable economies like Ghana is shifting their focus to chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes and dementia.
Dr Powers reports that Ghana has significant shortages of pathologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists. There are about 12 practicing psychiatrists in the nation and a similar number of pathologists but there are three medical schools that train young doctors. There may be less than a half dozen neurologists and there are very limited resources to train these specialists within the country. This manpower scarcity poses a genuine obstacle to staffing the medical schools with adequate specialists to provide comprehensive neuropsychiatric and neuropathologic education for the students. Dr. Powers reports that the Cape Coast medical students were bright, energetic and well informed about the basic sciences. They were enthusiastic to learn the cutting-edge science and many were interested in a learning experience in the US, especially at UAB or in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Powers observes that these young people are highly motivated to help build their nation and the health care system.
Ghana is a former British colony and English speaking nation with close ties to the United States. Ghana is rich in natural resources and President Obama recently visited the nation to promote this relationship. The national revenue produced by the discovery of oil in Ghana, a stable democracy, has increased the demand for health care and other public services by the citizens of this west African nation. Ghana recently began a national health insurance plan and the political leadership is attempting to build a medical infrastructure to support these services.