International Partnerships

Trainees may get the opportunity to volunteer abroad as part of a global health partnership. Cambridge Global Health Partnerships (CGHP) coordinates a number of ongoing partnerships with hospitals and teams in low- and middle-income countries. Teams across the hospital trust are involved and they are always on the lookout for volunteers and opportunities for new partnerships. 

Trainees from the infection specialities have most recently been involved in a partnership with two hospitals in Kampala, Uganda focusing on antimicrobial stewardship and infection control. We designed and ran a teaching course over a week in September 2019 together with colleagues from pharmacy and infection control covering topics from basic microbiology to outbreak management, drugs and therapeutics committees and hand hygiene. This experience is extremely valuable both in terms of putting your practice into context and overcoming new challenges but also provides you with new friendships both at home and abroad.

A further partnership with hospitals in Harare, Zimbabwe has also been developed and there are opportunities for future trainees to take this forward. The short term nature of many of these placements makes them very accessible to trainees who may not be in a position to take significant time out of training but want to gain global health experience as part of well supported ongoing programmes of global health improvement.

There have also been trainees who have successfully applied for the East of England Global health Fellowship, which was supported by the Training programme Directors of both Infectious Diseases and Microbiology.