April Newsletter

[KigeziMed]

Kigezi International School of Medicine Newsletter - April 2004

Global Health Clinic - Update:

Kigezi students have made a commitment to pioneer a Polio clinic in Nigeria, this clinic would serve as a free service to the community. In order to assist in reaching their goals, students organized a fundraiser at Café Africa in Cambridge on Saturday, March 27, 2004.
The planning behind a trip of this nature is not as easy task, nor is it cheap. Our students will keep us updated on the development of this mission as new details arise. Your help in the endeavor would be much appreciated, to make a donation please email polio_eradication@kigezi.edu.

UN World Food Programme:

Kigezi is excited to announce our new charitable partnership with University Books Online. Each time a Kigezi student purchases textbooks or medical equipment from our virtual bookstore, a portion of that purchase will be donated to the UN World Food Programme. At the end of each academic year, students will receive an email detailing their yearly donation totals!

Parents and loved ones can also purchase a gift certificate for their favorite Kigezi student online. For further information, please visit our virtual bookstore, http://www.universitybooksonline.com/kigezi/, we thank you for helping to support the UN World Food Programme.



Student of the Month - ****** Thimm
Why I Chose Kigezi – by ****** Thimm

As a child, I remember my mother, a village school teacher, disinfecting and bandaging the wounds of our Haitian neighbors with a basic first aid kit. My first interests in medicine arose in the Haitian boondocks. Since then, I have lived in the U.S., the Czech Republic, Albania, and now the U.K. I have also traveled to many other countries, including South Africa and Swaziland most recently. All these experiences have fostered a desire to practice medicine on a global scale. Though many U.S. medical schools allow for the opportunity to do an elective rotation abroad, the Kigezi International School of Medicine offered me the most varied international medical experience I could find.

Kigezi has turned out to be a great choice. Currently finishing my second year, I have really enjoyed the great diversity among the students with which I interact and the personal attention I get from my professors due to the small class sizes. Preparing for the next two years of clinical rotations, I look forward to learning medicine within at least three different medical systems (the UK, US, and Uganda). I’m really excited about my rotations in Uganda and I also hope to do a trauma rotation in Soweto, South Africa. (Soweto only has one hospital for about four million people!)

Interested in Anesthesiology and Emergency Medicine, I plan to return to the US after graduation for my residency training. I will likely practice for a little while in the US, but it probably won’t be long before I’m off to some remote corner of the world providing my services to those in dire need. My dreams include working for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and setting up a hospital in a developing nation. I believe that with my education from Kigezi, the worldwide connections that I am developing, and my devotion to service, those dreams can be realized.



Emergency Travel Insurance
Kigezi students are now eligible for a new programme in partnership with Betins company. The insurance plan covers some major medical, emergency evacuation, and repatriation among other benefits. The programme is very inexpensive and students can register online directly through the company. Additional coverages can also be purchased.

For further information or to register online, please visit our website, http://www.kigezi.edu/eti.html. All students are covered with the National Health Service at no charge while in Cambridge, UK. This new plan will cover students as they travel to our international locations throughout the globe while on preceptorships or clinical rotations.


Upcoming Events:

April 22, 2004:
Kaplan will be hosting a seminar for Kigezi students at 6pm to discuss the USMLE, residency application and placement.
May 7, 2004:
Kaplan will be holding a 3 hour mock USMLE exam for students planning to take Step 1 this summer. On May 14, students will receive a diagnostic analysis of their strengths and weaknesses and have a one on one interview with the Kaplan representative.



Student Government Association
By Vicent Bakyenga – Vice President of Kigezi Student Government
For a holistic medical student

The Kigezi Student Government, KSG, was set up with the aim of fostering student-student, lecturer and administration relationships, to advocate for a socially conducive environment for all the students and also sponsor various club activities in and around the school / university. All this is to be done to help make all our students well equipped and confident to face Life’s challenges including our Clinical (medical) practice that all so eagerly await our expertise.
For the time KSG has been operational, it has achieved loads including the addressing of various students concerns, allocation of part of it’s budget towards supporting Humanitarian activities like this year’s Polio Immunization Clinic in Nigeria and also helped create a socially conducive atmosphere for the students through the supporting of social get-together parties, seasonal festivals like the Thanksmus celebration among others.
Working in collaboration with colleges and Universities (Cambridge University) in our locality, KSG has also been able to give our students chances to interact and listen to various inspirational persons that are legends in their different fields of specialty.
Our students have had a chance to attend talks by Lord Mccolli, a seasoned Surgeon, whose medical and leadership skills have seen him become President of Mercy Ships International UK. He is part of a team that has freely helped the world’s least privileged - operating on Cleft palates & lips, tumors that have been growing for years unattended to, cataracts, helped build schools, clinics and volunteered other forms of assistance to the world’s most embattled countries like Cambodia & Sierra *****. Their work has transformed the LIVES of hundreds of thousands giving them another reason to live.
We are as a student body proud to have also been able to attend talks by Proff. Magdi Yacoub- a pioneer in the world of open heart surgery who has seen the field grow from the myth that it was to the prestigious medical field it now is. He has performed more than 2,000 operations on children, teenagers and adults alike - offering them another beat of life.
The talks by these two renown legends have left us strengthened and challenged to carry on in our struggle to be part of those that will change tomorrows world.
At Kigezi we all help put the student body in the right direction of Life well knowing that …"the greatest thing in life is not so much where we are but in what direction we are moving".
Happy Easter to everyone at KISM!


Tuition Update:

We are pleased to announce a tuition decrease for the upcoming academic year. For the 2004-2005 academic year, pre-clinical tuition will be decreased to $19,500, or $6,500 per trimester.

This decrease comes about as a necessity to assist our students to be able to afford our programme with the falling value of the dollar against the British Pound. We do not want to unduly burden our students while they are living in the UK and are not able to afford basic necessities, hence a tuition decrease.

The tuition amount, $19,500 is not inclusive of housing or school fees.


Farewell to Jerry Seagreaves:

Jerry Seagreaves has served as our Recruitment Manager for 1.5 years. He will be pursuing an alternate career as of April 1st, 2004. We would like to thank him for his impeccable service to our students, his friendly attitude and his knowledgeable assistance to those seeking information about our programme. We wish Jerry all the best in his future endeavors!

August 2004 Admission:

Our august admission is right around the corner. We are accepting 4-year and 5-year students for this admissions date. If you are interested in applying, be advised that we have limited space available in our 4-year and 5-year programmes. To reserve your spot, apply today!
If you are interested in applying to our programme, or simply would like more information, please call 1-800-539-9949 or email jahalia.washington@kigezi.edu, or melisa.esposti@kigezi.edu.

To view this newsletter in its entirety, including the photos, you can download the attachment from our website in the newsletter section.

Kind regards,

Melisa Esposti
Head of Admissions
Kigezi International School of Medicine

[KigeziMed]

This newsletter can now be found at http://www.kigezi.edu/archive/archive_22.html

Melisa Esposti
Head of Admissions