Sharing a passion for medical leadership

Professor Mohsin Sidat is a thoughtful, gentle and charming man. Having been appointed the Dean of Medical Faculty at the University of Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) in Maputo, Mozambique last May, he is one of the newest Medical Deans in Africa – and at 42 he is one of the youngest.

He graduated from UEM at the top of his class in 1994, and then completed a Master of Science from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before venturing to Australia in 2003 to start a PhD at Melbourne University’s School of Population Health.

Mohsin says he was encouraged to come to Melbourne by Professor Julie Cliff, a teacher in his medical degree and an alumna of the University of Melbourne who has been teaching, treating and researching in Mozambique since its independence in 1975. He was also strongly supported by another colleague and friend, Associate Professor Jim Black from the University’s Nossal Institute of Global Health, who had spent 11 years working in Mozambique, and who teaches every year in the UEM Masters of Public Health. 

Mohsin and his wife Sumeya, and their two children, Mohammed and Fayzah loved their time in Melbourne. Mohsin said he benefited immediately from interactions with a wide range of international and local students and greatly appreciated the opportunity to develop as an independent researcher. Mozambique has a major HIV epidemic, so Mohsin based himself at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre where he was expertly supervised and mentored by one of Australia’s leaders in sexual health, Professor Kit Fairley. He and his family were welcomed by a host family and they integrated quickly with local schools and life in Fairfield. Mohsin became a voracious reader of philosophy, religion, self-help and sociology. 

On completing his PhD in 2007, despite the attractions of staying in Melbourne, he and his family moved back to Maputo where he worked in both the Department of Community Health and the Department of Microbiology. His research output increased rapidly, and he developed a number of new international collaborations in areas such as HIV, maternal and child health, and strengthening of health systems. When the previous Dean left, he neither sought nor wanted the Dean’s job. However, he was heavily encouraged by staff and his senior colleagues to take it on. 

Six months later he is glad to have taken on this very challenging role. He works hard, but loves coming to work every day. Mozambique faces huge health, medical and social challenges so his aim is to transform the Faculty into a real academic centre for teaching and research excellence. He is in the process of establishing much closer relationships between the Faculty, the Ministry of Health and the adjoining Central Hospital in Maputo. 

As Dean of the country’s oldest Medical Faculty (it celebrates 50 years in 2013), he is building a network with the other four Medical Faculties in Mozambique, two public and two private institutions – none of which has been going longer than five years. He and his colleagues have established an impressively wide range of international collaborations with universities such as Vanderbilt, Emory, Columbia Trinity College Dublin, UCSF, Oslo, Barcelona, Institutes of Tropical Medicine in Lisbon and Antwerp among others, including of course the University of Melbourne. He says the key to effective collaborations is close mutually respectful relationships.

He relies on, and consults with his four Deputy Deans, other senior staff and mentors such as a previous Dean, and past teachers such as Julie Cliff. Not only highly intelligent and curious intellectually, he has a high level of emotional intelligence. He listens carefully, and has quickly established a unique series of regular separate, open meetings with administrative and technical staff, with academic staff and with students. 

Jim Collins, the author of the best-selling leadership book, Good to Great, describes the highest (level 5) level of leaders who are characterised by a paradoxical combination of fierce resolve and humility. Professor Sidat has an abundance of resolve combined with an innate humility. We can only expect great things at the University of Eduardo Mondlane’s Medical Faculty. 

www.mdhs.unimelb.edu.au