We are two medical students from the UK (Sunil Bhopal, University of Leeds) and Sierra Leone (Rossetta Cole, College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences, Freetown). We are trained in a similar manner, first in lectures and other formal teaching arrangements in a university, and then by spending more and more time in hospitals until we emerge finally as junior doctors ready to tackle the next hurdle. We met when I (Sunil) spent a month on medical elective in Freetown.
The starkest difference in our education has been in access to information. While in Leeds I (Sunil) have access to thousands of books through the university library, hundreds of journals in print and online and am a mere (university funded) bus ride away from a copyright library containing everything ever printed in the UK, in Freetown I (Rossetta) have had to make do with 20 year old donated textbooks, no paper journals, and access to HINARI online journals once (through a local internet cafe) over the 6 year course.
The issue of accessing information is a particular problem in Sierra Leone where there is no bookshop selling new books, and no medical text book importer. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 10/28/2009 07:13:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
