In November 2024, I was honoured to be invited as one of two keynote speakers to the Third Global Citizenship event organised by the University of Dundee and NHS Tayside, with sponsorship from Global Citizens Tayside and Kids Operating Room (KidsOR):
This annual event is a great opportunity for both undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Dundee to showcase their global citizenship activities and to compete for prizes. The evening was a joyous celebration of the engagement of so many students in transformative projects.
My fellow keynote speaker was Dr David Cunningham, CEO of the Scottish charity KidsOR. David delivered an inspirational talk which demonstrated the massive impact of the state of the art surgical infrastructure delivered by KidsOR, which allows paediatric surgeons to deliver high quality care for children in low resource environments. Now operating in over 40 countries, the global impact of the charity is massive.
David and I had opportunity for some informal discussion during the evening about our respective activities. We touched on the fact that in many low resource settings, including Malawi, there is a desperate shortage of high quality, well-equipped, functional dental surgeries. As a result, dental therapists and dentists struggle to deliver care for children and adults alike, because they are unable to use the full range of skills within their scope of practice. This results in many unnecessary referrals to central hospitals for relatively minor procedures, causing additional costs and inconvenience to patients. Furthermore, the already busy central hospital departments become overwhelmed.
David’s wife Claudia graduated as a dentist from the University of Dundee and is now Head of Dentistry at the University of Central Lancashire. David and I engaged in some further discussions after the global citizenship event and early this year he informed me that he would be in Malawi on 10th and 11th February to participate in a regional meeting of Ministers of Health in Lilongwe. He planned to bring Claudia with him to allow her to assess the dental situation on the ground and asked whether The MalDent Project team would be able to organise a suitable itinerary for her. Peter Chimimba and I began planning and arranged a programme that included both Lilongwe and Blantyre.
Day 1: Lilongwe
On Monday 10th February, Peter and I collected Claudia from her hotel in Lilongwe and headed to Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) Dental Department. We met initially in the office of Dr Jessie Mlotha-Namarika, the Senior Dental Surgeon at KCH, who is also the Course Coordinator for BDS 3. Dr Wiston Mukiwa also attended who, like Jessie, is a part-time lecturer on the BDS programme. Following introductions, Claudia was taken on a tour of the clinical facilities and then we headed to the conference room, where five of the Final Year BDS students who live in Lilongwe had kindly agreed to join us and were waiting. These students had all sat their final examinations and were awaiting the results. We enjoyed some further discussion before leaving Claudia alone with the students so that she could glean their views without any staff members present!
At the end of the morning session we had a group photograph …
… before Peter and I took Claudia to the Sunbird Capital Hotel for lunch.
We returned to KCH at about 3pm to meet David, who was keen to view the paediatric operating theatre at KCH – one of the first that KidsOR had installed. Following his flying visit we had time for a group photo before heading to our respective hotels.
Day 2: Blantyre and Chilomoni
Early on the morning of Tuesday 11th February, Peter and I collected Claudia from her hotel and headed to Kamuzu International Airport, where we caught the 08.10 flight to Chileka Airport, Blantyre.
On arrival, we headed directly to the Blantyre Campus of Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, where we met Dr James Mchenga, Acting Head of the BDS degree programme, Dr Nathan Lungu, Lecturer and Dr Tasneem Chikwatu, Assistant Lecturer. After initial discussions we went across to the Dental Department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where the BDS 5 students had undertaken their Integrated Dental Care programme over the past year. Here we met Wellington Chikuni, who will be overseeing the internship programme for the successful BDS 5 students who are allocated to the QEH Dental Department over the next year.
Our final stop was at Chilomoni Health Centre, where the charity AMECA is undertaking a major renovation of the infrastructure, including the establishment of a two chair dental surgery. Claudia was introduced to Ruthie Markus, the CEO of AMECA, who gave her a guided tour of the work underway.
The visit to Chilomoni concluded with a visit to the ongoing work on the dental clinic which, once completed, will be the first facility of its type at health centre level.
After bidding farewell to Ruthie and her team, Peter, Claudia and I had a light lunch in the city centre before returning to Chileka Airport for Claudia to catch her flight back to Lilongwe.
It had been a whirlwind visit by Claudia which has hopefully provided a real-life sense of the achievements to date but also the significant challenges that lie ahead. It has been partnerships that have helped us to this point and it would be wonderful if there were an opportunity for KidsOR and The MalDent Project to establish an element of collaboration moving forward.
Wow🔥thank you
Thank you Jeremy, for another informative blog. Great to have had the opportunity to have met up with Claudia, who generously gave up some of her non existent free time to looking round the facilities we are renovating at Chilomoni. An uplifting meeting.