Transcript - Video profile: Dr. Harriet Myanja-Kizza, Dean, College of Medicine, Makerere University

Now, probably you don’t know but I’m one of the Fogarty alumni. I trained in immunology at Case Western, and I did a two-year master’s training and I’ve continued on with my training on-site here in Uganda.

Since I came back, I think I spearheaded training of immunology, not only to clinicians but also to biomedical scientists. The model we used at that time was good in that we did have human resources at that time, so it was good to go and train in U.S., in my case, and then come back here.
 
But I think over the years, with human resources improving here on-site, and people voicing a need to have more and more training in Uganda, so they’re not away from site for too long. When you’re away on-site, you kind of fall back in developing socially, and also other areas as well. 

So, then more people now are interested in a kind of sandwich model, where one gets a Fogarty grant, where they do some of their training in Uganda, then they go to another university for, let’s say, 3-6 months, gain some skills and come back. And that’s the aid, get training that they can apply to the local scenario but get the technical expertise they’ll need from other countries. 

So our support continues with the Fogarty program, especially in the areas of training people in biomedical sciences. We have a model of microbiology where a Fogarty graduate came back, found a department that had very few staff and now over the years has built up labs, he has built up staff, and he has a cadre of students. We want to replicate the same for pathology, when we have a person who spearheads pathology growth here.

Pathology would be a way of interest to clinicians. We are the ones who use the services. I want a quick diagnosis for my leukemia and not to misdiagnose it. So if we have people who are trained in molecular diagnosis, who are trained both there and here. So they can bring that technology that we can use here, try it out here, and use that as their training model.

A system where they go out for five years to be trained, by the time they come back, they find that Uganda doesn’t have any of the machines they’ve been used to in the last five years. But if they know that this would be useful in Uganda, so they get that technology, start from scratch and build it up to such a level that we can have a pathology service that is of benefit to our patients. Our patients need that, they are waiting for that. But, thank you for coming.

END TRANSCRIPT

View the full video at http://www.fic.nih.gov/News/GlobalHealthMatters/Pages/video-fogarty-trainee-myanja-kizza-makerere-university.aspx.

Fogarty International Center
National Institutes of Health
31 Center Drive, MSC 2220
Bethesda, MD 20892-2220 USA 
ficinfo@nih.gov
http://www.fic.nih.gov