Creating a medical school for Malawi: problems and achievements
BMJ 2002; 325 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.325.7360.384 (Published 17 August 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;325:384All rapid responses
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Congratulations on your success through a difficult and challenging
journey that you have made in establishing the medical education in
Malawi. David Morley, Maurice King, Christopher Wood and David Werner have
spent their life time developing medical/health education in developing
countries. They would surely appreciate that you gave "Community Health"
slant to the medical education. I wonder if it would not be a better and
viable solution to combine "para-medics" training along with your medical
school. This way it will be more economical and viable option for which
you have better chance to obtain overseas support. AMREF in Kenya has
developed a long-standing expertise in training non-doctor health workers
for East Africa. TaLC in UK has long provided support through appropriate
and cheap "teaching aids" (books, slides, videos etc). I am sure you will
get much needed support from them too. Muhimbili Medical Center in
Tanzania also has a very good "community medicine oriented medical
eductaion curriculum". Good luck with your slow but sure progress.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Australia helped Malawi too
We at The Medical Journal of Australia have read Broadhead and
Muula's article with much disappointment.
Broadhead and Muula seem to have forgotten that, only a year earlier,
they published a similar article in the MJA titled "The Australian
contribution towards medical training in Malawi".(1) The opening sentence
in their MJA article was: "Australia has played a decisive role in helping
Malawi set up its only medical school". Unfortunately, this "decisive
role" (which included providing the first Dean of the College of
Medicine!) seems to have been markedly downgraded in the BMJ article, with
only two cursory mentions of Australia in the whole text (and no mention
at all of the earlier MJA article).
We cannot understand Broadhead and Muula's apparent decision that BMJ
readers do not need to know about the Australian contribution. For those
readers who would like to know the rest of the story, please consult the
MJA reference below. (Unfortunately this article was published before the
MJA began publishing full text online, so it is not available on the MJA
website. An abstract does appear on PubMed and we will happily send a copy
to anyone who contacts us at editorial@ampco.com.au).
1. Muula AS, Broadhead RL. The Australian contribution towards
medical training in Malawi. Med J Aust 2001; 175: 42-47.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests