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School children in Africa
According to the UN, more than 60 million children go to school hungry every day worldwide. To help combat the problem, Imperial College London has launched a new project to help local farmers in sub-Saharan Africa provide healthy school meals for local children.
The project will help governments to run school meal programmes using locally-sourced food, providing regular orders and a reliable income for local farmers. The project will also conduct a series of studies to analyse the cost and impact of the school meal programmes.
Supported by a $12 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the project aims to ensure a reliable and fair market for local farmers’ products in countries such as Mali, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi and Kenya.
Kevin – www.studylondon.ac.uk
Nursing student Jason Towner
London student Jason Towner has won the Royal College of Nursing Fellows Student Nurse award in recognition of his hard work for during his nursing studies.
Jason, who is on his final year in BSc Adult Nursing at Thames Valley University, will now be automatically selected for the Nurse of the Year Awards, the most prestigious accolade for recognising and rewarding excellence in nursing.
Nursing is Jason’s second career, having previously worked in pest control for 15 years. We wish Jason good luck in the national awards, due to take place in London in November.
Kevin – www.studylondon.ac.uk
Marta Rabikowska (centre), leading the research
The University of East London and Queen Mary, University of London have been awarded £125,000 by the Leverhulme Trust to fund a two-year project on the health of immigrants living in London.
The project will investigate the types of healthcare different ethnic minority groups living in London receive, including those in the Indian, Nigerian and Polish communities. The study will use filmed interviews to document how migrants from the three countries keep healthy and treat illness, including how traditional knowledge and practices may have changed since they first arrived in the UK.
It is hoped that the research will help doctors and other healthcare professionals to recognise the importance of culture when they treat different ethnic groups.
Kevin – www.studylondon.ac.uk
The Queen at Thames Valley University
Thames Valley University (TVU) recently welcomed Her Majesty The Queen to open its award-winning building, Paragon House. The new building is home to the Health and Human Sciences faculty, providing students with a state-of-the-art Nursing Simulation Centre and panoramic views across the London skyline.
TVU is one of the largest providers of student nurses and midwives to the NHS. The new lecture theatres at Paragon House will be used to teach and train the next generation of nurses as part of the university’s 10-year teaching contract with the NHS.
During the opening ceremony, The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh watched a live dance performance by arts students and a hospital demonstration by nursing students using a state-of-the-art electronic dummy.
Simon – www.studylondon.ac.uk
Reseachers at St George’s, University of London
The development of gels that can protect people against HIV will receive more than £90 million of funding, following research by British scientists that suggests new medicines have the best chance yet of controlling the spread of Aids.
New research is developing gels that women can apply before having sex to prevent HIV from entering the bloodstream. A number of world-leading British research teams, including those at Imperial College London and St George’s, University of London, will be awarded funding to continue this groundbreaking research.
Funding will be supported by the UK Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is thought that with an Aids vaccine still decades away, such preventative medicines provide the most realistic strategies to protect people against HIV infection, a condition that has claimed more than 25 million lives to date.
Simon – www.studylondon.ac.uk
Bethan (second from the left) and her friends
Six students from Middlesex University’s Theatre Arts course undertook a volunteer project with a difference when they travelled to Uganda in East Africa to work on educational projects organised by UK-registered charity Soft Power Education.
The students helped renovate school properties and created spaces where teaching could take place. One of the projects at Murchison National Park involved converting an old building into an education centre which will work with local school groups promoting the importance of ecology and guarding against threats to wildlife.
The theatre arts students put skills learned on their degree courses into practice, organising dance, singing and drama workshops, and a puppetry workshop for deaf children. Each student worked with a different year group, helping the groups to devise their own stories about health issues such as malaria and Aids.
The trip was inspired by one of the volunteers, Bethan Dear, who had volunteered in Uganda previously. Bethan and her fellow students raised over £5,000 to help finance the trip and aim to repeat the trip next year with a larger group of volunteers.
Kevin – www.studylondon.ac.uk
Liver disease death rates are rising in the UK
A new £1m clinical research facility dedicated to tackling liver disease recently opened at Imperial College London. The new Robert Hesketh Hepatology Clinical Research Facility will accommodate fifty researchers, doctors and nurses.
The unit will provide the best possible care for thousands of patients who will be offered the opportunity to participate in the unit’s clinical research programmes and enrol in clinical trials.
Blood, liver and DNA samples taken from patients will be used to develop methods of predicting which patients will develop severe complications of liver disease. Researchers will also study patient genetics to identify why some people are more susceptible to liver disease than others.
Simon – www.studylondn.ac.uk
King's College London
King’s College London has announced it is offering 50 PhD scholarships to help students in the College’s health schools pay for living costs and cover tuition fees. The 50 awards will be available to healthcare students across a range of disciplines including biomedical and health sciences, medicine, dentistry, nursing and midwifery.
The scholarships last for up to four years and will be funded by King’s in association with the Medical Research Council; Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council; the British Heart Foundation; Cancer Research UK, and other leading charitable organisations and industrial sponsors.
King’s is the most successful university in the country for PhD completion rates. Its health schools also run an innovative Researcher Development Programme which provides students with highly valued skills for careers in business, government, academia and the healthcare professions.
Kevin – www.studylondon.ac.uk
“London is a city where different cultures and thoughts meet. Living in this city, I never feel bored.
