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Darrell G Kirch,
the AAMC President and CEO participated in the African
Medical Education Symposium in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
in April this year. He recently published an article
entitled “Regaining My Perspective in Dar es Salaam”
in the AAMC Reporter in which he praises SAIDE’s
OER Africa initiative. Jenny Louw provides a synopsis
of the article.
The symposium brought together medical education leaders
from several continents to discuss future directions
for medical schools in the region, to address issues
related to capacity building, accountability, sustainability,
and retention in medical education in Africa.
Dr Kirch highlighted that the meeting focused on the
potential benefits of forming an African association
of medical schools which would be building on the work
of the Sub-Saharan African Medical Schools Study (SAMSS),
a medical school-capacity building project funded by
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Also featured
in the symposium were six Gates Foundation funded learning
partnerships between African and American medical schools
and reports from a number of innovations from countries
and schools in regard to medical education, post graduate
medical education, e-learning, and accreditation. Dr
Kirch noted that this visit gave him an opportunity
to see the impact of U.S – African school pairings
on a continent that according to SAMSS, carries a quarter
of the global disease burden with only three percent
of the world’s health workforce.
Site visits gave Dr Kirch a firsthand opportunity to
see directly the extraordinarily challenging circumstances
under which African student, doctors, and hospital staff
work:
“My visits to two medical schools and their
hospitals were at once heart-warming and heartwrenching;
the former because of the courage exhibited by students
and faculty in such an environment and the latter
because of the packed hallways of mothers with their
very sick children waiting with the hope of obtaining
much needed medical attention.”
A visit to an anatomy lab reminded Dr Kirch of the
conditions Abraham Flexner described of U.S. medical
schools a century ago which stood in stark contrast
to the state-of-the art, computer-assisted labs now
prevalent in U.S. classrooms. However, he notes that
there is a cause for optimism as technology has begun
to leapfrog Africa into the 21st century:
“Two years ago, the South African Institute
for Distance Education, a non-governmental organization
based in Johannesburg, launched an open education
resources (OER) website called OER Africa with the
mission to establish dynamic networks of African OER
practitioners by connecting like-minded educators
– teachers, academics, and trainers to share
and exchange resources. Over the last year, OER Africa
users also have become heavy users of our own MedEdPORTAL®,
with more than 65 health education institutions in
Africa downloading an estimated 680 educational resources.
(Later this month, OER Africa representatives will
meet at the AAMC to discuss further collaboration
between our respective websites and services.)
Dr Kirch concludes that the time is right to continue
the dialogue between the AAMC and their African colleagues,
and that:
“Critical to our success will be identifying
ways to leverage these paired relationships between
the United States and Africa, providing technical
assistance to resources such as OER, and imparting
practical advice about continuing professional development.”
Click
here to view the full article.
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