The third annual Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Symposium will be held in Kampala – Uganda on August 6-8, 2013 at the Serena Hotel. ACHEST, as the African Coordinating Center, alongside George Washington University, will play a vital role on the onsite management.

The symposium themed “Sharing Innovation, Enhancing Sustainability”, will attract health experts, health professional educators, across Africa, the rest of the world and their development partners. The innovations presentations will raise a set of interesting and important issues based on the experience of MEPI schools that will create an impetus for idea sharing, problem solving, and networking. The innovations presentations will also assure that every school in the MEPI Network has an opportunity to present some aspects of their program.

The five MEPI thematic areas for the symposium are increasing the number and quality of HCW's trained; Retaining HCWs over time and in areas where they are most needed; improving regionally relevant research, Sustainability and creating Community of Practice.

MEPI is a collaborative project designed to improve the quality of African Medical Education.
In Uganda, Makerere University won the grant and formed the MESAU Consortium; a country-wide partnership bringing together five academic institutions - Busitema University, Gulu University, Kampala International University, Makerere University and Mbarara University of Science and Technology. The MESAU consortium works together with Johns Hopkins University in the U.S.A. MESAUS aims at building capacity, performance enhancements in medical education and relevant research for excellent nationwide service delivery.

All together there are 13 projects in 12 Sub-Saharan African countries 2 of which are pilots. Two schools in South Africa are involved. The pilot projects are in Malawi and Ghana, while otherprogrammatic projects are in Kenya, Ethiopia,Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe Nigeria, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania and Mozambique.