New charity launched to help fund student medics in Africa

Medic-To-Medic enables UK student doctors to support their counterparts in Malawi - News Release

For immediate use
Friday 11 April 2008

A new campaign to help fund trainee doctors in Malawi will be launched tomorrow (Saturday 12 April) by a medical graduate of Imperial College London.

Dr Kate Mandeville, now a Senior House Officer at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, is behind the Medic-To-Medic Programme, a new initiative that will see UK doctors and medical students directly sponsoring their counterparts in Malawi.

The programme guarantees to pay the £90 per year tuition fee of 20 trainee doctors in Malawi, selected on the basis of financial need and academic potential, for a full year. Doctors and medical students in the UK will sponsor an individual student, and will receive regular updates from that student on their progress. The programme will be administered through the International Medical Education Trust (IMET2000).

The scheme will also offer teaching opportunities for Imperial medical students at the Malawi College of Medicine. The Malawi College finds it difficult to recruit enough teachers for the medical students in the early years of the medical course, which is mainly science-based. Imperial medical students in the final three years of their course will have the opportunity to go to Malawi for up to six weeks during the summer break to assist with teaching.

Malawi has only two doctors per 100,000 people although it is estimated by the World Health Organisation that a country needs around 250 healthcare professionals per 100,000 people to provide basic healthcare. Dr Mandeville hopes that the Medic-To-Medic programme will play a part in increasing the number of qualified doctors in the country. She says:

"Malawi has just one medical school located in Blantyre, its largest city. Despite government subsidies, it still costs students £90 a year to study and many cannot afford this. I hope by setting up this programme we can increase the number of doctors graduating every year and make real improvements to the healthcare of ordinary Malawians."

She hopes that in future the programme will expand to include other medical schools in the UK and Europe. She also aims to develop a similar scheme for postgraduate medics with the aim of stemming the brain drain of doctors in developing countries to the west. She adds:

"A great problem for developing countries is retaining their staff once they have qualified, with many doctors emigrating to high income countries like the UK, Australia and the USA. I would like to set up a similar postgraduate scheme in which specialists sponsor trainees in the same speciality, supplementing local salaries in order to reduce the incentives for leaving their country."

IMET2000 was founded to promote high quality medical education around the world. It has supported Dr Mandeville in setting up Medic-To-Medic, by taking on the scheme as an affiliated project. Founder Colin Green said:

"Education is the key to solving so may of the world’s healthcare problems and it is certainly the starting point for all development. The average life expectancy in Malawi is just 47 for men and 46 for women. As well as short term improvements in the numbers of practicing doctors, we hope our programme will contribute to raising the average life expectancy in the medium-long term."

Dr Mandeville was born in Malawi when her father was working as an engineer for the Malawian government, and developed the idea for the programme during a return visit last summer. “I had been thinking about the idea for a while, and went to visit the medical school in Blantyre. The Dean told me that many medical students have to spend much of their study time searching for extra funding, and I realised that a scheme like this could have a real impact,” she explained.

The launch event will take place at Hotel Russell in Bloomsbury, London, with a dinner and guest speakers including Colin Green of IMET2000 and Dr Mahmood Adil, Medical Director at The Care Quality Commission Establishment Team in England and Visiting Fellow of Global Health at Yale School of Public Health. The Malawian High Commissioner to the UK, Dr Francis Moto, will also be attending the event.

Doctors and students interested in getting involved in the scheme should visit www.imet2000.org/medictomedic 

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For more information please contact:

Abigail Smith, Imperial College London Press Office
Tel: +44 (0)20 7594 6701
Email: abigail.smith@imperial.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

About Imperial College London:

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Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and business, delivering practical solutions that improve quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture.

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