how-we-work

The aim of the Medic to Medic Programme is to guarantee the tuition fees for healthcare students who have academic potential, but are in financial need.  With this consistency of income, students are able to focus on their studies until graduation.

The Medic to Medic Programme aims to link individual students to donors in the UK. In this way, we function along the lines of the “sponsor a child” schemes run by well-known charities. Of note, although we link individual students, we pool our donations so that if a donor withdraws, no one student is disadvantaged.  These donors have been mostly doctors and medical students so far, thus “medic to medic”, but have also included members of the public.

Our medical students in Malawi send their linked donor a quarterly email update on their progress, which can then develop into a correspondence if the donor so wishes.  We hope this will not only provide mentoring advice for medical students, but will also raise awareness of the conditions facing medical colleagues worldwide.

In addition, the Programme is developing an elective and teaching element. Medical students will be able to visit their linked student and spend their elective period on attachments with their student at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre. There has also been great interest in our two-week “teaching blocks” on the preclinical course. Unsurprisingly, there is also a severe lack of medical teachers, and the medical school would welcome any volunteers with whom to share the teaching burden.