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Medical Development
Kenyan Village-Based Medical Educators (KVME) program
Location: Nairobi and Ngong with travel to outlying areas
Suitable for: anyone but preferably those with a background or interest in medicine, nursing, allied health and health promotion
Date constraints: program development phase (including clinical component) in December, program delivery phase in January
Selection: subject to application and interview
The KVME program involves volunteers establishing and conducting a training program for non-professional medical educators from villages in Kenya.
At present, there is a significant lack of understanding about a variety of preventable and manageable diseases (such as HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and diabetes) in Kenyan society and this is heightened in non-urban village areas. The project seeks to train senior members of village communities in Kenya to be basic medical educators covering key conditions appropriate to a Kenyan village context. Taking a culturally-sensitive approach, this would help in increasing understanding and hence reducing the burden of disease.
The KVME program has backing from the University of Melbourne Dreamlarge Knowledge Transfer Scheme through the School of Population Health, the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences.
Register your interest in the Volunteer Kenya Summer 08/09 Program
Clinical Experience (including possible mobile short-term clinics) in conjunction with Community Medicare Africa
Location: northern Nairobi (Kikuyu Town) with option of travel to outlying areas
Suitable for: those with a background in medicine, nursing or allied health; particularly suitable for medical elective students
Date constraints: nil
This program allows for the opportunity to flexibly provide clinical experience in a developing world setting. The primary base for this is within local hospital settings in outlying disadvantaged areas of Nairobi. Hospital experience would span both public and mission hospitals and has the potential to include general medicine, general surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics and infectious diseases. Opportunities are tailored to individual interests.
In addition, GAPS is running a project with a primary in-field ambition to run large mobile weekend clinics in non-serviced areas of rural Kenya providing free medical services and helping to deliver free medications. The medical services would primarily be run by Kenyan medical and nursing staff, all volunteering with the GAPS partner Community Medicare Africa. These primary health care clinics in Kenya would be run in partnership with the support and interaction of groups of primary care physicians (ie general practitioners) in Australia. Volunteers would have the opportunity to help develop this program and partake in it, depending on its stage of development at the time.
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Register your interest in the Volunteer Africa Program