This month Pericles Lewis, Yale University’s Vice President for Global Strategy and Deputy Provost for International Affairs, visits Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda to meet with leadership, alumni, and medical residents.
Yale and Makerere University have a long, rich partnership that dates back nearly two decades. In 2002, Dr. Majid Sadigh, an associate professor of medicine at Yale, traveled to Kampala to teach under the umbrella of the Academic Alliance for HIV Prevention and Care. During his visits, he noted a contrast between the advanced clinical and epidemiologic research activities at Makerere University and the challenges of patient care in Mulago Hospital, the largest public hospital in Uganda.
In the fall of 2005, Sadigh and Dr. Asghar Rastegar, professor of medicine and current director of the Office of Global Health in the Department of Internal Medicine, travelled to Kampala, Uganda on behalf of the Yale University School of Medicine (YSM) to explore a collaboration with Makerere College and Mulago Hospital.
To date, the Makerere University-Yale University (MUYU) Collaboration has been a resounding success. Under the MUYU memorandum of understanding, Yale physicians, residents, and medical students travel to Kampala for clinical rotations, and Ugandan physicians and students train in New Haven. The goal for both groups is to improve patient care through education, training, and research; to build up the educational and clinical infrastructure; and to support research that could be easily translated into practice.
During his visit, Lewis connected with some of the Makerere medical residents who visited Yale as part of the MUYU training program, an integral component of the MUYU partnership. The length of training at Yale has ranged between 6 weeks and 12 months and has focused on areas of greater need, specifically with respect to non-communicable diseases. Since 2006, 21+ faculty/physicians have been trained in the following specialties and subspecialties: cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, nephrology, rheumatology, oncology, pulmonology, intensive care, pediatric surgery, endocrine surgery, emergency medicine, pathology, and neurology.
Lewis’ trip supports the Yale Africa Initiative (YAI), an ongoing effort by Yale to prioritize and expand upon its collaborations on the continent. Through YAI, Yale continues to leverage the power of partnerships and global networks across the continent to produce remarkable outcomes in science, public health, business, and numerous other disciplines and industry sectors. The visit to Makerere University is just one of many exciting events that the Yale team will participate in as they travel to Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa this month.
