Celebrating collaboration for improved health in Mozambique

Volume 10 Number 4 April 14 - May 11 2014

Professor Julie Cliff and Associate Professor Jim Black
Professor Julie Cliff and Associate Professor Jim Black

 

Kate Dukes speaks to Associate Professor Jim Black from the Nossal Institute for Global Health about how a collaboration between Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo and the University of Melbourne has contributed to the development of Mozambique.

The Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Having been established in 1963 at the height of Portuguese colonial power, it was not open to Mozambicans until independence in 1975. But it has grown to be a university with a proud tradition of excellence and has a longstanding relationship with the University of Melbourne, recognised by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne and the Faculty of Medicine at UEM in 2010.

The foundation of this relationship was formed through Professor Julie Cliff from the Department of Community Health in the Faculty of Medicine at UEM, and an alumna of the University of Melbourne, who has been working in Mozambique since 1976. 

Professor Cliff has focused on tropical medicine throughout her career. She got her first experience in the field during an elective unit in Papua New Guinea during her University of Melbourne studies.

Professor Cliff realised early on in her medical career that if she wanted to work in developing countries that she would need to teach. After graduating from the University of Melbourne, she worked with healthcare professionals in Tanzania. 

Soon into this post, she realised that teachers with post-graduate qualifications were greatly needed to make a difference, so she undertook further study at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before moving to Mozambique.

She has used this passion for tropical medicine to make a difference to the health of Mozambicans for nearly 40 years. She has had a particular interest in konzo, a disease caused by the cyanide remaining in under-treated bitter cassava during droughts in poor rural areas of Mozambique. 

Encouraged by Professor Cliff, Associate Professor Jim Black from the Nossal Institute for Global Health has spent many years working in Mozambique to make a positive difference to the lives of Mozambicans.

After starting to work in Mozambique many years ago, Associate Professor Black says that within a very short time he was inspired by the enthusiasm and commitment he saw in his Mozambican colleagues.

“I spent the first four years as a ‘general duties doctor’ in various small rural hospitals in two different provinces, working at every level within the Mozambican national health service from tiny sub-district health centres to a provincial hospital, doing everything from trauma surgery to leprosy treatment,” Associate Professor Black says.

“I came to highly respect the excellent training the Mozambican doctors had received at UEM, and the vital contribution made by all the non-doctor cadres of health workers – who are actually the backbone of the health service throughout most of Africa.”

Associate Professor Black now travels to Mozambique at least once a year, along with Professor Rob Moodie from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, to teach in the UEM Master of Public Health course. During a recent visit to Melbourne, Professor Cliff awarded Professor Moodie and Associate Professor Black with certificates in recognition of their outstanding and enduring collaboration with the Department of Community Health of the UEM’s Faculty of Medicine.

He says that his years as a clinician and public health practitioner, as well as his knowledge of the provinces and rural areas, have stood him in good stead as he teaches the current generation of young Mozambican public health workers. 

“Since the establishment of the Memorandum of Understanding between the universities, we have taken one UEM medical graduate, Dr Abu Saifodine, through a successful PhD at the Nossal Institute for Global Health. We also provide tutorial support to the one or two Mozambicans per year who undertake the University of Melbourne Master of Public Health course,” says Associate Professor Black.

Recently, Associate Professor Black’s ‘low-cost technology for health’ group began collaborating with colleagues of the Pharmacology Department at UEM to test Mozambican versions of mobile phone support applications aimed at improving the care of patients in small health centres.

An important part of this work has been the long-term approach and sense of continuity, as each year Associate Professor Black and Professor Moodie work with the same colleagues, meaning they have been able to build a strong ongoing collaboration.

“We work in a mutually respectful partnership with our Mozambican colleagues. Ever since independence Mozambique has had a proud history of innovation in providing health services to its widespread, impoverished and mostly rural population – so there is a lot we can learn,” Associate Professor Black says.

This collaboration is further enhanced by the close friendship that has developed between Nossal Institute staff and the Dean of the UEM Medical School, Professor Mohsin Sidat. Professor Sidat undertook his PhD on HIV care at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, supervised by Professor Kit Fairley, who was previously Associate Professor Black’s own PhD supervisor.

“The close friendship that has developed over the years with Professor Sidat and other key UEM academic staff is an important part of the process,” Associate Professor Black says.

“It is my belief that institutional academic collaborations only really work where there is trust and true friendship between the individuals involved.”

www.mdhs.unimelb.edu.au