Catholic University of Mozambique

The New Medical School
IT Provision

The New Medical School

In an important attempt to redress the lack of medical staff levels, in the country as a whole and in the northern and central provinces in particular, the Catholic University of Mozambique in Beira, which has flourishing faculties of Economics, Agriculture, Law, Informatics and Tourism decided to set up a new medical school in Beira. In July 2000 a steering committee was established including a physician and an orthopaedic surgeon from Ipswich.

In conjunction with the University of Maastricht a problem based learning curriculum was developed for the training of tutors. There are 10 full and 5 part time clinical tutors. The first students recruited entered a preliminary year of training in English, basic Science, Mathematics and Ethics four years ago and are now completing their third year of medical studies. 300 students have now been enrolled. They are extremely enthusiastic, well motivated and hard working. Assessments identical to those developed in Maastricht have been used and show that the standards achieved to date are very good.

There is therefore the potential to double or treble the number of new young doctors graduating in the country per year. This need for additional medical manpower is urgent.

The initiative and success to date of the Medical faculty of The Catholic University is extremely encouraging. However this faculty is still in its fledgling stages. The curriculum is dependent on very limited resources and does need additional help in these early years to ensure the schools long-term future.

It would appear that the presence of students and the new graduates are associated with significant improvements in  standards of care in the Central Hospital.

Because of their heavy workloads it is difficult for local doctors to undertake continuing medical education and it has been proposed that the medical school should take a lead in its provision. External visiting specialists could make an important contribution to this programme.

In addition funding is very limited and as student numbers increase the tutorial staff will also have to expand. There are specific gaps in some specialty areas, for example Dermatology, Neurology and Psychiatry for which there is no local available expertise. Ipswich is to provide specialist training in Neurology and Emergency care.

It has to be emphasised that to some extent the clinical skill development needs to be better for graduates in Mozambique than in the more developed countries because, on graduation, supervision by more experienced colleagues may be quite limited.

In order to accelerate training in basic clinical skills in years 3 and 4 a consultant from Ipswich accepted an honorary appointment as external Professor in Internal Medicine in order to advise on and to supervise the establishment of an outpatient clinic on the University site. This clinic opened in Sept 2003.

This now not only provides a suitable environment for clinical skill training for students but also for the management of non-communicable diseases for which there is little or no provision of care at the moment.

IT Provision

The investment in IT support for the problem-based course is essential if students have the capacity to access the literature and IT based educational material. Investment has been considerable with a large number of computer stations. However with increasing numbers of students and staff access to the internet access is slow. Solutions to this are being sought.

Furthermore if the education process is to be disseminated throughout the community units( as it must) IT based distance learning solutions might be suitable and are being explored .