Doctors are in class today and tomorrow at the medical symposium jointly hosted by the LBJ Tropical Medical Center and the Department of Health at the Lee Auditorium.
It’s the second symposium of its kind and the theme is Medical Challenges in the Territory: with a focus on cancer and infectious diseases. 
A skeletal staff is manning the hospital but the majority of clinics are not opened today.
Joining the doctors, nurses and medical personnel at the opening of the symposium this morning were Lt Governor Lemanu Peleti Mauga, members of the LBJ Hospital Authority Board, a few lawmakers and officials from other ASG departments.
The invocation was given by Fr. Pale Schmidt.
The speakers for the various symposium sessions are doctors at LBJ and DOH as well as visiting physicians from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Australian National University and Brown University, Rhode Island.
Dr. Patrick Pedro ,a son of Samoa who is practicing in Hawaii, is also one of the presenters.
CEO of the LBJ Hospital Taufetee John Faumuina listed several challenges affecting health care including financial, territory’s remoteness , hurdles in attracting and keeping qualified medical personnel and meeting Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Service certification.
Taufetee called for a unified approach to tackling those challenges.
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Lt. Governor Lemauu showed emotion when he spoke about one of the topics of the symposium…cancer.
Having lost his wife Pohakalani to cancer a few months ago. the lt. governor posed several questions about the disease and the medical profession’s response to it.
One of his questions is why there seems to be more people being diagnosed at Stage 4 cancer instead of the beginning stages of the disease.
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The symposium will conclude tomorrow evening.
