This past November ALASBIMN has held a very successful scientific meeting in Santiago de Chile. You are now the new President of ALASBIMN. Can you give the international readers of the magazine an overview of the efforts of ALASBIMN to promote Nuclear Medicine in Central and South-America?
The Latin American Association of Societies of Biology and Nuclear Medicine (ALASBIMN) has been supporting the different Nuclear Medicine Associations in our region, trying to make strategic alliances with the different international scientific Societies such as the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC) and the IAEA in order to improve the training and learning of nuclear physicians in our region. It also encourages us to research and publish our research papers in the ALASBIMN
journal, which helps its dissemination at the regional level. However, we still need to consolidate much more all the associations of Central and South America in order to support each other.
You are very familiar with the strengths and needs of the Peruvian Health Care system. Can you give us an idea of the assets and challenges of the practice of NM in Peru?
Peru is a country of a diverse geography and therefore our resources in the field of health are still scarce giving priority to comprehensive basic health. However, in the last ten years we have significantly improved our technology in the field of imaging. Nuclear medicine has developed a lot in the capital, with 15 nuclear medicine centers and only 3 nuclear medicine
centers in some provinces of the north and south of the country with SPECT, SPECT / CT and three PET-CT scanners that are only located in the capital of the country.
Our challenge is to spread even more our nuclear medicine specialty throughout the country and have a greater number of gamma cameras in those places where there is no specialty and generate more jobs for young nuclear physicians who have just graduated from the specialty. Also, one of our limitations is that we do not have many suppliers of radioactive products nationwide and we have limitations with several radiopharmaceuticals, especially in the field of PET-CT.
You have had the opportunity to read the first issue of the NM magazine Pangea-ePatient. What do you think of the magazine and what would your suggestions be to improve it?
I had the opportunity to read the first issue of the journal at the ALASBIMN congress in Santiago de Chile in November 2017 and it
seemed like a very educational magazine that promotes different articles and works of the different specialists in nuclear medicine. It would be great to have the Pangea-ePatient magazine in the future through an internet platform and be able to have access in the
different countries of Central and South America.