30 October 2007

University of Dundee links up with ‘the Kingdom in the Sky’

The School of Nursing & Midwifery at Dundee University has been awarded a grant to work with their counterparts in the tiny southern African country of Lesotho, sometimes known as ‘The Kingdom in the Sky’ or ‘The Mountain Kingdom’.

A grant of £60,000 has been awarded jointly to the University of Dundee and the National University of Lesotho. The grant, awarded by The British Council under the Developing Partnerships in Higher Education (DelPHE) initiative, will allow the two Universities to work together to develop education, research and information technology skills for healthcare and library staff in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the National University of Lesotho.

The award of this joint grant will give Dundee the chance to help one of Africa’s least developed and poorest nations to improve its health care system.

Lesotho is a mountainous country of just over 2 million people, and is landlocked, being entirely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. The country, formerly known as Basutoland, is a member of the British Commonwealth. It is particularly blighted by HIV & AIDS, with 29% of the population affected, one of the highest incidences in the world.

Life expectancy for the population is therefore estimated as being around 48 for men and 56 for women, although in some areas the average life expectancy is thought to be as low as 37.

The team from the School of Nursing and Midwifery - Professor Julie Taylor, Dr Kay Wilkie and Mr Andy Jackson, in partnership with Professor Philip O’Donkor of the National University of Lesotho - have been awarded the grant over three years, with the specific aims of the project being to improve maternal, child and mental health in the Basotho population.

"Lesotho not only has a huge problem with HIV & AIDS, it also has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world," said Professor Taylor, who visited the country last December.

"What we are aiming to do is help develop their infrastructure both in the university and more importantly out in the clinical areas. A major problem they have at the moment is that they cannot train enough nurses because they can’t support them in the clinical areas. By helping them to develop their maternal and child health research and the infrastructure around it we can help them develop systems that will enable them to train more of their own nurses."

Members of the team will visit Maseru, capital of Lesotho, and there will be several visits by staff from Lesotho to Dundee, with the first of these due to take place in November. The wider aim of the project is to support work towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals set out by the United Nations in 2000.

NOTES TO EDITORS

The University of Dundee is engaged in a number of medical and nursing projects in Africa. The University will hold a graduation ceremony for nurses in Eritrea last this month, all of whom have completed their training through a distance learning programme run by the University.

Medical students at the University have also established an elective programme with Malawi which will see them working in the African state.

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