Malawi Clinics

Thank you for showing interest in the Twinning Project. Meet some of those involved:

Nanzen Kaphagawani

Nanzen Kaphagawani is the Campus Director at Malawi College of Health Sciences. She is the Project Director of SCOMAL on Malawi side since March 2009. She worked at different capacities as a nurse and joined MCHS in 1996 by then it was Zomba School of Nursing.

She is looking forward to working with everybody concerned with the Project. In addition, Nanzen says she is looking forward to sustainability of the project as it is important for staff Education through modern Information Technology as well as social networking to improve the quality of health care.

Dr Ron Neville

The Project Director, Ron, is a GP partner at Westgate Medical Practice in Dundee. He has worked around the world in his former capacity as co-leader of a WHO Global Asthma Initiative Project and is now at the forefront of efforts to introduce the effective use of e-health technology. He first proposed the idea of ‘twinning’ clinics as a way of closing the gap in inequality of access to good healthcare between the developed and developing world.

Sam Riddell

Sam is the Practice Manager of Westgate Medical Practice. He has oversees logistics expertise from a former career in the Armed Services and has a track record of managing funds, motivating teams and project management.

Pam Wilson

Pam helped initiate the Twinning Project in her former role as Voluntary Services Oversears (VSO) Nurse at Malawi College of Health Sciences, Zomba Campus. The success of the Project today is largely due to Pam’s relentless dedication and her unrivalled experience of the nursing profession in both Zomba, Malawi, and Dundee, Scotland. Read more about Pam’s work in Malawi in her interview on the blog.

Sylvester Chawala

Sylvester is the SCOMAL (Scotland-Malawi) Twinning of Clinics Project Coordinator on Malawi side. He comes from Ludzi, Mchinji District. He works for Malawi College of Health Sciences  as a Librarian/IT Lecturer. He came to know about the SCOMAL Project which operates under MCHS-Zomba Campus, through a Scottish VSO – Pam Wilson and got interested to assist in running the IT activities of the project. He is keen to work  with all the health centres under the project from both countries and champion good communication between Malawian health workers and their counterparts in Scottish General Practices.

Monica Mmanga (Mrs)

The Project’s bankers are the NBS Bank-Ginnery Corner Branch. Mrs Monica Mmanga is the Branch Manager of Ginnery Corner Branch. Monica has been very instrumental in giving the project proper advice regarding banking. She tirelessly offers her services to the project team even at short notice.

The project is very thankful for all this.

Pam Wilson & John Kachitsa

John Kachitsa works as a Marketing Manager for BROADBAND DIGITAL SOLUTIONS (BDS) which is a division of Burco Electronic System specifically created for the supply of various broadband products and services.

He wants us to know that BDS maintain and support all of the Wireless Local Loop (WLL) radio communication equipment and services provided between Celtel’s high sites and the end users.  Broadband radio communication services have revolutionized computer communications in Malawi. He further advises that organizations can now securely interconnect their offices through a VPN whilst also providing permanent Internet services. A VPN is the extension of a private network that encompasses links across shared or public networks like the Internet. He adds that VPN enables organizations to send data between computers across a shared or public network in a manner that emulates the properties of a point-to-point private link.

Kachitsa says VPN connections allow organizations to have routed connections with geographically separate offices or with other organizations over a public network such as the Internet while maintaining secure communications. A routed VPN connection across the Internet logically operates as a dedicated WAN link. With both the remote access connection and with the routed connection, VPN connections allow an organization to trade in long distance dial-up or leased lines for local dial-up or leased lines to an Internet service provider (ISP). John also says entry Level Bandwidth is 64K and can be upgraded as demand requires.

BDS is the Project’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) since March 2009.

malawi.clinics@gmail.com