Dr GolBerg Institute of Functional and Aesthetic Medicine Featured in VOGUE
Dr GolBerg's showcase in VOGUE
With over two decades of experience, Dr Alexander GolBerg is a multidisciplinary board certified specialist. His fields of expertise include Family Medicine, Osteopathic, Anti-Aging, and Regenerative medicine. Based out of an office on Manhattan's Park Ave, Dr GolBerg offers patients bespoke and patient-centered treatments.
The VOGUE showcase highlighted Dr GolBerg's recognition as one of Castle Connolly's Top Doctors of 2024. Castle Connolly Top Doctors is a trusted resource for identifying the nation's best doctors. Physicians are nominated by their peers and selected based on rigorous criteria that include their professional qualifications, reputation, and commitment to excellence in patient care.
Dr Golberg has been recognized as Castle Connolly Top Doctor for 2024
This latest milestone for the Dr GolBerg Institute of Functional and Aesthetic Medicine highlights Dr GolBerg's commitment to providing world-class, non-invasive treatments that prioritize both wellness and aesthetics. His holistic approach to medicine integrates the latest advancements in regenerative therapies, allowing patients to achieve optimal health and long-lasting beauty without the need for surgery.
In addition to his recognition by Castle Connolly and the VOGUE feature, Dr GolBerg continues to be a leader in the field of anti-aging and functional medicine. His practice remains at the forefront of innovation, offering treatments that harness the body's natural healing abilities to rejuvenate skin, enhance vitality, and improve overall well-being. His recent recognition only reaffirms his mission to help patients look and feel their best through cutting-edge, personalized treatments.
More information about the Dr GolBerg Institute of Functional and Aesthetic Medicine can be found at the Institute's website https://www.drgolberg.nyc/.
Email: drgolbergnyc@gmail.comWebsite: https://www.drgolberg.nyc/
SOURCE: Dr Golberg Institute of Functional and Aesthetic Medicine
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/241480
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Spotlight's questions on this to the Gauteng health department went unanswered. Compounding the administrative and planning blunders for returning students is the impact of deepening corruption and mismanagement in Gauteng's health department. It has been under routine Special Investigating Unit scrutiny, as well as coming under fire for service delivery issues such as the ongoing backlog of cancer patients lingering on treatment waiting lists. In March, the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg ruled that the Gauteng health department failed in its constitutional obligation to make oncology services available. In April, the department failed to pay its doctors their commuted overtime pay on time. These payments ensures there are doctors for 24-hour coverage at hospitals and makes up as much as a third of doctors' take-home pay. The situation in the North West is also bleak. It's health facilities are routinely facing medicine stock-outs and understaffing. Its health department is regularly struggling with accruals and paying suppliers on time. Given all these challenges, it is puzzling that these two provinces in particular are so committed to sending students to Cuba, we understand at a higher cost than for training doctors locally. 'Better investments' Professor Lionel Green-Thompson, now the dean of the faculty of health sciences at the University of Cape Town, was involved in managing returning students from the Cuba-SA programme between the mid-2000s and 2016. At the time, he was a medical educator and clinician at Wits University where he oversaw the 18-month clinical training of more than 30 returning students. 'Some of these students were among the best doctors that I've trained and I remain a stalwart supporter of the ideals of the programme. But at this point, there are better investments to be made, including directly funding university training programmes in South Africa,' he tells Spotlight. 'A programme that's rooted in our nostalgic connection with Cuba and its role in our change as a country is now out of step with many of the healthcare settings and realities we face in South Africa,' says Green-Thompson. He says a proper evaluation of the programme needs to be done. There are also lessons to learn, he says, including a review of admissions programmes. How some students who enter a programme at 20% below the normally accepted marks, exit the programme as excellent doctors, he says, offers clues to rethink how great doctors can be made. Green-Thompson also suggests we need to ask why specialisation has become a measure of success for many doctors in South Africa, often at the expense of family medicine. This, he says, takes away from the impact doctors make at community healthcare level as expert generalists. But changing the perspectives of healthcare professionals requires early and sustained exposure to working in community healthcare settings, says Professor Richard Cooke, head of the department of family medicine and primary care at Wits. Cooke is also director of the Wits NMFC Collaboration since 2018 and serves on the NMFC Ministerial Task Team. He says, speaking in his Wits capacity: I'm not in support of further students being sent to Cuba for the undergraduate programme, because these students are not being trained in our clinical settings. 'The Cuban system is far more primary-healthcare based than South Africa's, but that doesn't necessarily translate into these students ending in primary healthcare,' says Cooke. And curricula at Wits is shifting, for instance, towards placing students at district hospitals for longer periods of time, rather than weeks-long rotations, he says. 'When students become part of the furniture at a hospital, they become better at facilitating, at critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork and collaboration,' Cooke says. But making this kind of transformation in local training takes government funding and commitment. Students and doctors need to be attracted to the programme and need reasons to stay. But the money and resources to make this happen are simply not there – even as the Cuba training programme continues. Cooke adds: 'There hasn't been definitive data on the NMFC programme. But even if the programme over 30 years has done well and met its targets, it's not been cost efficient. What's needed now is to leverage expertise and established partnership in different, more cost-effective ways like in research, health systems science and health science education.' Up to three times more expensive? Professor Shabir Madhi, dean of the faculty of health sciences at Wits, says the NMFC programme costs an estimated three times more than it costs to train a student in South Africa. This, he says, should be enough reason for a beleaguered health department like Gauteng's to stop sending students to Cuba. He also says: 'Government is aware that it simply can't absorb the number of medical graduates being produced.' Madhi says some trainee doctors are sitting at home while others trying to finish specialisations are being derailed. Broadly, he pins the blame on the mismanagement of resources, including the department underspending R590 million on the National Tertiary Service Grant, meant to subsidise specialised medical treatment at tertiary hospitals. Madhi says universities have worked hard to close the gaps identified by the NMFC programme 30 years ago, but now student doctors are being let down by the government not playing its role. He says: Across the universities, there's been a complete overhaul of the curriculum to be focused on primary healthcare. Students are also getting community exposure as early as first-year training. He says that when it comes to admissions, the majority of students entering medical schools across the country are now black South Africans, and additional changes have been made to the selection process. 'We used to have a race quota, but in further revisions, we have introduced criteria that focus on the socio-economic component, with 40% of the admissions coming from students in quintile 1, 2 and 3 schools [no-fee public schools],' he adds. South Africa has 11 medical schools, with the most recent addition of North-West University – specifically focused on rural health – and the University of Johannesburg in the pipeline to join the list. So the number of doctors being trained and graduating is increasing. Madhi estimates the total number being trained is above 900 per year for Gauteng alone. The bottleneck of getting doctors into clinics and hospitals, he maintains, is not a shortage of doctors, but government's inability to pay doctors' salaries or to create functioning, well-resourced workplace environments. 'You can't put a price on that' For Dr Sanele Madela, the ongoing challenges cannot detract from the goal to get doctors into communities – including through the NMFC programme. Today, he's the health attaché at the Havana Mission for the NMFC training programme. Madela was also, at one time, a schoolboy with a dream of becoming a doctor. Growing up in Dundee in KwaZulu-Natal, he remembers almost never seeing a doctor in his community. 'Then when we did see a doctor, it was a white person or an Indian person and they never spoke our language – a nurse would have to translate,' says Madela who was part of the 2002 NMFC intake. The six years abroad, he says, exposed him to very different reasons for becoming a doctor. He says: When people finish medical school, they say thank God it's over, but in Cuba, people say thank God for the knowledge and information so they can give back to their country. When Madela got back to South Africa, his journey eventually led him to work in Dundee District Hospital. It was the same hospital where his mother had worked as a cleaner. The NMFC programme, Madela says, still plays a vital role because of its objective to get more doctors into rural and township areas – 'and you can't put a price on that', he adds, responding to criticism over the programme's comparatively high costs. 'We are used to seeing the NMFC programme from the point of view of adding human resources, but it's also about the impact it makes for a community,' he says. It's the impact of a community finally getting their own doctor. His argument is that, thanks to the NMFC programme, he got to be that person for his community.
