MDs for Teaching

'Medicine for Africa - MDs for Teaching' is a project aimed at improving the medical teaching capabilities of medical colleges and universities in sub-Saharan African countries.

The primary goal of the project is to provide local medical schools with "traveling/visiting" physicians (MDs) of a variety of specialties who will hold a series of lectures and classes in different countries. In addition to allopathic physicians, practitioners of Traditional African Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and homeopathic medicine will also take part in teaching future physicians the medical knowledge they will need to help their local patients. The "traveling practitioners" will travel from university to university and stay for a predetermined amount of time (e.g. three to four weeks) while giving daily lectures and classes to the students.

These lectures will be recorded for review as well as for future use at other colleges / universities, and thus, ultimately allow them to be broadcast simultaneously by way of a telemedicine set-up to other institutions (after the necessary set-up, organization and financing have been developed).

Participating MDs and other medical professionals will be recruited from medical schools, public healthcare schools and universities in the USA and throughout Europe. In addition, private practice practitioners who are also teaching at universities will also be considered (providing time availability). The 'MDs for Teaching' programme will be run on its own merits with interested Southern African universities, but is planned to also be integrated into the SACME project as the latter materializes over time.

The project is expected to require a first step time frame of about five years for covering all medical specialties and recording the lectures. Thereafter, an established telemedicine set-up could provide similarly effective lectures to a number of different universities simultaneously, on individual, independent time schedules.

All lectures will be held in English - however, for other language such as e.g. French or Portuguese, MDs and medical professionals from respective Western countries/universities could also be engaged for this project.

This project will create winners among all of its participants.