This December amazing things happened in the pearl of Africa, when Medical Students from all over Africa meet together for The 10th African Regional Meeting. For 4 days, several sessions were successfully held, including the sessions of the Standing Committee on Medical Education (SCOME), thanks to the unlimited energy, motivation and enthusiasm that SCOMEdians showed, and their commitment to take a step toward improvement of medical education in Africa.
The SCOME sessions team, which consisted of SCOME Regional Assistant for Africa (Zamzam Ali) and the IFMSA Liaison Officer for Medical Education issues (Stijntje Dijk), facilitated the discussions about Quality Assurance in medical education, students rights, ethics and professionalism. The participants were also introduced to the work of IFMSA in general and major activities in SCOME. The participants split up into smaller groups to brainstorm and think about common issues facing medical education such as ”Health workforce migration and medical education, how this affects us as student and as doctor in the future?”, ”Non formal education, as a tool for improving medical education” and ” Accreditation of medical schools and the students participation”.
During the 3rd day of the sessions, we had a very special guest speaker, the former president of the World Medical Association Dr. Margaret Mungherera, who discussed ethics and professionalism, challenges faced in human resources for health planning in Africa and how the youth can take an active role in developing their communities as they ensure sustainability and continuous development of health care systems. The other morning sessions joined us as well to take part in this session, it was amazing to learn lot from the experience and life lessons that dr. Mungherera presented to us.
By the end of the week, it was really great to be inspired by the ideas and suggestions of the participants and to have learned from each other like we always do during the IFMSA meetings and events. The SCOME sessions team hopes you keep the same spirit and energy after the African Regional meeting and keep on the amazing efforts you are doing in developing your local and national organizations and remember, IT’S TIME FOR AFRICA, KEEP SHINING!
Entry written by Zamzam Ali, Africa Regional Assistant for SCOME
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