Another successful Flying Faculty week – internationalising oral health teaching and research at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences

Regular readers of the blog will be familiar with the Flying Faculty programme that has been in operation since the Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) course at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHeS) was launched in 2019. The visits, supported by Scottish Government, fund short periods of intensive teaching in key subject areas by academic specialists from outwith Malawi.

Restorative Dentistry is a core subject in all undergraduate dental programmes and requires in-person teaching, since the technical skills required cannot be readily taught on line. A very successful Restorative Dentistry Flying Faculty visit took place in 2024 and a further visit was planned and took place between 13th and 17th July 2026.

The team of six Flying Faculty members included four from the University of Glasgow (Drs Andrew Paterson, Abisola Asuni, Grant Mathieson and Prof Shauna Culshaw), one from the University of Liverpool (Dr Jumoke Adeyemi) and one from the University of Western Cape (Dr Ridhwaan Haffajee). Very conveniently, the team members from the UK and South Africa were scheduled to arrive at Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe at a similar time on Sunday 12th July, which greatly aided logistics.

Ridhwaan, whose plane had arrived first, was quickly through immigration and chatted with Drs Peter Chimimba and and James Mchenga …

… until the rest of the team arrived:

We had been allocated a minibus to use by KUHeS and a fantastic driver called Mr Kingsley Gonani who rapidly became a key member of the team.

We headed from the airport to Lifestyle Boutique Hotel, which would be the base for the team for the next few days. The significant volume of luggage included large amounts of donated dental teaching materials that had been brought by team members to support the week of intensive instruction that would follow.

After freshening up following their travel, the team members met for their first dinner together. It was a very enjoyable evening that included discussions in preparation for the week ahead. Andrew Paterson, who was the team leader for the visiting faculty, is a great fan of Nali sauce and began as he meant to go on with liberal lashings that would spice up his meals throughout the week. For anyone interested in learning more about the Nali sauce story, you can view an interesting 10 minute CNN Africa documentary here.

After a good night’s sleep, the team left early on the Monday morning for the Dental Department at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH).

Once inside, there was a significant amount of preparation required before the teaching could begin. Unpacking and organising the large volume of dental consumables and teaching materials that the team had carried with them was one of the first tasks.

Both BDS 3 and BDS 4 students are studying in Lilongwe, so the logistics of how to split them into smaller groups of comparable experience was a major consideration. Thought needed to be given to the various venues available for teaching delivery within the Dental Department. Furthermore, the phantom head unit required a large amount of cleaning and minor maintenance before it was suitable for use. Andrew, who had led the previous Flying Faculty visit and who also has extensive experience of working in rural environments in Africa, was an inspiration to us all as he led the preparations.

The interaction with the students began with a welcome from Dr James Mchenga, Acting Head of the Department of Oral Health Sciences:

Andrew then took to the floor and invited each of the Flying Faculty team members to introduce themselves. After an explanation to the students of how the week would be structured, the teaching began.

Over the course of the week, teaching took place in a variety of formats and covering many facets of Restorative Dentistry. In addition to the Dental Department at KCH, we had access to a classroom in the recently completed Confucius Institute at KUHeS, about a 10 minute walk away.

The teaching included classroom teaching …

… as well as more practical pre-clinical skills instruction:

Subject areas included operative dentistry and prosthodontics …

… endodontics…

… and periodontology:

The team was provided with access to some of the dental units in the patient treatment area …

… which was an ideal location to learn the practical art of impression taking:

This was an exciting and interesting segment of the week for the students …

… who are showing their post-impression enthusiasm in this photo with Grant:

The planning of this week of intensive activity was a major exercise in itself. Each evening, before dinner, Andrew would invite everyone to provide a debrief on their day of teaching before leading a discussion to plan the detailed timetable for the following day:

In addition to his leadership and timetabling skills, Andrew also proved his abilities in preparation of the phantom head laboratory for the classes that took place there during the week:

In an effort to better organise the storage of instruments and layout of the practical classes, Jumoke kindly purchased a number of containers from a local shop:

The boxes were subsequently filled with a variety of items and labelled to improve organisation in the store room at KCH. Plastic plates were used to lay out materials for a practical exercise in dental scaling.

Whilst the emphasis of the programme was on Restorative Dentistry, an overarching theme for all forms of dental treatment is professionalism, ethics and medical law. Andrew, who has a Masters degree in this subject area, provided multiple small group sessions dealing with the key principles.

A highlight of this Flying Faculty visit was the involvement of Dr Yusuf Maundala, one of the Assistant Lecturers appointed when the BDS Course was launched and who is completing specialist postgraduate training in prosthodontics in Nairobi, before returning to his post at KUHeS. In addition, the team was joined by Drs Chifundo Banda and Felix Nandolo, two of the first cohort of home-trained dentists, who have just completed their internships.

Under the supervision of the experienced Flying Faculty team, Chifundo and Felix both engaged enthusiastically in delivering teaching …

They also developed their communication and teaching skills by delivering oral health messages to patients awaiting treatment, making use of training materials previously created and used in a programme in Northern Malawi:

Another novel facet to this Flying Faculty week was a significant component that examined research possibilities, an important element of academic life that is still in its infancy in the Department of Oral Health Sciences at KUHeS. Later in this post you will read more about the research opportunities that arose from this week of meetings.

For me personally, the involvement of two of Malawi’s first home-trained dentists in delivering teaching for BDS students with the Flying Faculty team was a highly significant development. In the video documentary made by KUHeS following graduation of the first cohort, the then Director of Clinical and Rehabilitation Services in the Ministry of Health had commented on how some of these young dentists would become the teachers of the future:

A photo of Chifundo and Felix with the team of international teachers records this moment for posterity:

On the Tuesday, Peter and I visited Professor Mia Crampin and colleagues at the Malawi Epidemiology and Intervention Research Unit (MEIRU) based at the Community Health Sciences Unit in Area 3 of Lilongwe.

The purpose of the visit was to build on a preliminary discussion in Glasgow in May this year between Prof Lorna Macpherson, myself and Dr Owen Nkoka, who works between the School of Health & Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow and MEIRU. Consideration is being given to the potential inclusion of oral health screening within future rounds of population cohort data collection by MEIRU in Karonga and urban Lilongwe. We had an interesting and positive conversation with Mia and her team on the feasibility of oral health screening and I have subsequently linked them with Prof Shauna Culshaw, who has significant research interests and experience in the impact of oral disease, particularly periodontitis, on systemic health.

On the Wednesday morning, Shauna and I were due to leave with Kingsley for Blantyre, but before we left there was time for a group photograph of the team with BDS 3 and BDS 4 outside the Dental Department:

It is a long drive from Lilongwe to Blantyre and as usual we had a short break at Chikondi Stopover, which is famed for its goat meat.

We arrived in Blantyre in the afternoon and dropped Shauna at The Leslie, the lodge where she and the rest of the team would stay whilst in Blantyre. After a short rest, we headed to one of my favourite restaurants for some coffee and cake – La Caverna & Cafe Mandala. Mandala House is a very historic building and has strong Scottish connections which you can read about here.

During our visit, we spotted a framed letter that had been delivered when Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney MSP, visited Malawi in October 2025. A previous blog post reported on the visit by the First Minister to The MalDent Project during that same tour of Malawi. The framed letter was a reminder of the strong historic links between Scotland and Malawi and the fact that without the funding from the Scottish Government it would have been impossible for The MalDent Project to get off the ground.

In the evening I had the pleasure of introducing Shauna to my good friend and colleague Nelson Nyoloka, Lecturer in Pharmacy at KUHeS. Nelson has been extremely helpful on many fronts to The MalDent Project and has played a key role in disbursement of monies raised through MalDent Student Aid to BDS students requiring financial support for day-to-day living expenses.

The following morning, Shauna and I headed to the KUHeS Campus and met with Dr Nathan Lungu, Lecturer in Dental Surgery and Course Coordinator for the BDS 5 students.

Nathan had arranged for Shauna to deliver some teaching in periodontology to the BDS 5 students, which filled the morning.

After lunch, Shauna and I attended a discussion with colleagues in the Department of Public Health. This meeting had been instigated by Professor Peter Macpherson, Head of Public Health in the School of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow. Peter has worked extensively in Malawi and currently holds an NIHR Global Health Research Professorship. His colleague Hussein Twabi, who is a Lecturer in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at KUHeS and a Research Fellow at the Chichiri Centre for Health Research and Training (CCHRT), organised a superb set of presentations and discussions:

It rapidly became clear that multiple opportunities exist to develop strong research collaborations between the Departments of Public Health and Oral Health Sciences at KUHeS and their respective counterparts at the University of Glasgow. The discussions that Peter Chimimba and I had enjoyed with Prof Mia Crampin and colleagues at MEIRU earlier in the week also had a direct bearing on the possibilities for joint working. Some of these ideas would be re-visited the following day when Shauna and I visited the Blantyre Blantyre Laboratory.

In the evening we had arranged to meet with Dr George Kafera, another one of the first cohort of Malawian trained dentists to have graduated in April 2025 and now completed his internship. George is currently working as director of a private practice in Blantyre but his ambition is to become a dental academic. Regular readers of the blog will have seen posts he has guest written about scientific publication and his oral health Facebook page which now has more than 70,000 followers. Over dinner we discussed career options and possibilities, informed by a very insightful presentation that George had prepared previously.

On the Friday morning we had arranged a visit to the Blantyre – Blantyre Laboratory. This is another KUHeS / University of Glasgow collaboration funded by the Scottish Government. The meeting was hosted by Mr Youngson Ghambi, who is the Commercialisation Manager.

After introductions and initial discussions, Shauna was given a tour of the laboratory facility, which was quiet because the majority of the staff were attending a training day that was compulsory as part of the programme to gain accreditation for the facility. The laboratory looked very familiar to Shauna as it is fundamentally a copy of the Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre in which she has spent many hours at the bench. This replication of equipment, staffing and Standard Operating Procedures is an intentional feature to support very high quality joint working. The photo below of Shauna standing in the entrance to the ‘Paul Garside Room’ is particularly special, since in earlier times at the University of Glasgow Paul was one of Shauna’s research supervisors.

Following the tour of the laboratory we were joined by Dr Toney Nyirenda (Pathology) and Dr Wakisa Kipandula (Biomedical Sciences) to develop further our initial discussions. Once again, the potential for joint research that could incorporate oral health into ongoing areas of interest at KUHeS was very obvious.

During the time that Shauna and I had been spending in Blantyre, the other members of the Flying Faculty team had been continuing the intensive teaching of BDS 3 and BDS 4 in Lilongwe. Immediately after lunch on the Friday they hit the road to travel to Blantyre and join us at The Leslie.

Before I had left Glasgow in early July to travel to Malawi, I had delivered four new laptop computers to Andrew. These had been purchased by the charity AMECA to be provided to four newly selected scholars on the KUHeS MB BS degree course, as part of AMECA’s student sponsorship programme. As laptops have to be carried in hand luggage, transporting them to Malawi in multiples is a challenge. Andrew, Bis, Shauna and Grant kindly carried one each on their outbound trip. This was a huge help to us at AMECA for which we are very grateful.

The laptops have now been handed over to the four medical student scholars and will be put to good use as they pursue their studies:

Dental students in Foundation Year and those in BDS 1, 2 and 5, all of which are based in Blantyre, were informed that the Flying Faculty team would be available to deliver some teaching on the Saturday. Since this was the weekend, attendance was voluntary.

In the morning, BDS 5 students were invited to attend for a session that focused on clinical dentistry cases and treatment planning. The Final Year of the BDS course is the point at which integration of all the knowledge gained in earlier years is required and the teaching was designed with this in mind.

After the morning session of teaching was completed, Nathan and I accompanied the team across to the construction site of the new Dental School building on the KUHeS campus.

The brickwork on the facade of the building is now well underway:

The hills in the distance provided a scenic backdrop for a photo on the roof of the building:

After lunch, we returned to Lecture Theatre 2 and met a group of students from Foundation Year and BDS 1 and 2, who had accepted our offer of a teaching session. Foundation Year is designed to bring all entrants to courses at KUHeS up to A-level standard in basic sciences before they join their chosen healthcare course. BDS 1 and 2 are taught core biomedical subjects jointly with MB BS 1 and 2 students. As a result, there is minimal dental content in the curriculum until BDS 3.

Andrew and the team decided that a suitable approach would be for each member to provide some background to their own specialties and career journeys. This turned out to be a master stroke and provided an extremely interesting afternoon with which the students fully engaged.

Following a group photograph …

… we invited the students to speak with us informally if they wished. These conversations lasted for about an hour and it was clear that the students had very much valued the opportunity to hear such a varied and detailed insight into the profession they had chosen for themselves.

As this session marked the end of the teaching delivery by the Flying Faculty team, we took a final photograph on the KUHeS campus:

After some time to relax back at The Leslie, we travelled to Ryalls Hotel for dinner with Dr Mwapatsa Mipando. Mwapatsa has recently been appointed as Vice-Chancellor of Malawi University of Science & Technology (MUST), but as those of you have followed the blog from its early days will know, he was formerly Principal of the University of Malawi College of Medicine and was the instigator, with a small team of us in Malawi and Scotland, of The MalDent Project. It was an excellent opportunity for the Flying Faculty team to meet and share their experiences with Mwapatsa. There was the added bonus that Jumoke is from the University of Liverpool where Mwapatsa was formerly a postgraduate student, so they had lots to share! It was a great evening

There are no flights from Blantyre to Addis Ababa on a Sunday, so the UK contingent could not depart for home until the Monday. However, there were Sunday Airlink flights to Johannesburg and onward to Cape Town, which Ridhwaan was scheduled to take as he had work commitments on the Monday. After a final group photo …

… I drove Ridhwaan to the airport to begin his journey home:

Meanwhile, Kingsley took the rest of the team on a trip around Blantyre, taking in key spots including Independence Arch, Limbe Market and a Chipiku supermarket to stock up on Nali sauce.

We re-convened at The Leslie for a lunch based on local items purchased on the foray into Blantyre and, for Bis and Jumoke, a blast from their past in Nigeria:

After lunch, Kingsley drove us all to Chilomoni, so that the team could visit the Dental Clinic that has been established by AMECA as part of the major refurbishment of the Health Centre. The visit was conducted by Wisdom Makandawire who, until a year ago, was the dental therapist based at Chilomoni and who is now a BDS 1 student at KUHeS.

The team were shown the two surgeries …

… and the instrument decontamination facility:

The visit engendered much discussion about future possibilities once the Ministry of Health approves the appointment of a dentist to work with the dental therapist who is already employed there. Following the visit to the dental clinic, Wisdom also provided a tour of the other parts of the Health Centre that were refurbished and upgraded by AMECA – the Maternity Unit, Out Patient Department and Physiotherapy.

On the Monday morning there was just time to fit in a visit to the Dental Department at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital:

On the way back to The Leslie, there was a stopover at the KUHeS Memorabilia Shop to buy branded shirts and bags for use on suitable occasions back in the UK:

Finally it was time for Kingsley to deliver the UK team to the airport after a tremendous week, packed with activity:

Happily, all members of the team are now safely home.

As the sun sets on this Flying Faculty week …

… a few reflections from my perspective.

First, the BDS students are an amazing group of young people. Their thirst for knowledge is massive and they engaged extremely well with the visiting team. These students represent the future for improved oral health in Malawi and KUHeS should be very proud of them. The feedback forms that the students completed at the end of the visit are still to be analysed and a summary will be shared in a future post.

Secondly, my deepest gratitude is due to Andrew, Bis, Grant, Jumoke, Ridhwaan and Shauna for their tremendous contributions during the week. The teaching and clinical environments are very different from those in their home institutions but they rose to every challenge and delivered an educational experience of outstanding quality for the students. The enthusiasm and camaraderie within the team has resulted in a universal wish to return at a future date and continue the work that has been started.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to the Scottish Government, whose support through the KUHeS Scottish Strategic Partnership Grant makes activities of this type possible and moves the BDS programme further towards independent sustainability.

Thanks to Annie Mwapasa, Administrator for the Scottish Strategic Partnership Grant, who made all the logistical arrangements for the week, and to Maldalitso Chabwera for her excellent organisational support in Lilongwe.

Several organisations provided dental teaching materials that were transported as hold baggage to Malawi by the team, and our thanks are due to those donors.

Many thanks to the British Society for Periodontology for sending by courier a large consignment of very valuable handouts for distribution to the students.

Our driver, Kingsley Gonani, was not only a very skilful driver but went out of his way to support the team – many thanks from us all.

Photo credits

The photographs in this post are taken from a bank of images created by all members of the Flying Faculty team during the visit.