From Toronto to East Africa: a medical library partnership

Abstract

In 2008, I had the opportunity to go to Ethiopia (Fig. 1) to assess current medical library resources and services provided at the Black Lion Hospital, which is the major teaching hospital for Addis Ababa University (AAU), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I attended the Addis Ababa International Educational Symposium, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the Ethiopian Ministry of Education put forth the desired and ambitious goal of increasing Ph.D. graduates in all disciplines by 5000 and Masters graduates by 10 000 within the next 10 years (medical subspecialists are included with Ph.D.s under this requirement). Universities worldwide with an interest in educational partnerships were invited to this symposium in order to help AAU meet its goal of dramatically increasing its number of academics. My invitation came from Dr. Clare Pain from the University of Toronto’s Wilson Centre, Toronto. Dr. Pain is the Toronto-based lead and Dr. Atalay Alem is the Ethiopian-based lead for the Toronto Addis Ababa Psychiatry Partnership (TAAPP, www.utoronto.ca/ethiopia) (Fig. 2). For the last 7 years TAAPP has provided training at AAU for psychiatry residents, in the first, and currently the only, psychiatry training program in the country. The partnership between AAU and Emmanuel Psychiatry Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (www.utoronto.ca/ethiopia), has included generous assistance from Mount Sinai Hospital’s Psychiatry Department, Toronto; The Peter A. Silverman Centre for International Health, Mount Sinai Hospital; and the University of Toronto’s Wilson Centre and Department of Psychiatry. TAAPP has laid the ground work and created the founding principles for the partnership developed for the advancement of medical library services. In 2003, Ethiopia had 11 foreign-trained psychiatrists out of a total of 1800 physicians in a country with a population greater than 77 million. This translates roughly into a ratio of 1 physician per 42 000 patients. In comparison, according to Statistics Canada 2009, Canada has approximately 60 000 physicians for a population of approximately 32 million. Canada’s physician to patient ratio is approximately 1 physician per 533 patients. Today there are 39 practicing psychiatrists in Ethiopia and a thriving psychiatric residency program with approximately six new residents graduating every year. The previously mentioned success of TAAPP has now transformed and expanded into over a dozen programs including library science, internal medicine, paediatrics rehabilitation medicine, nursing, emergency medicine, etc. This new group of disciplines is organized under a collaboration called the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC, www.taaac.ca). To increase Ph.D. graduates and subspecialists in medicine, it is a priority to further develop medical library services throughout Ethiopia. My attendance at the 2008 Addis Ababa International Educational Symposium was an opportunity to assess current Ethiopian medical library services. This initial assessment has led to a multi-year library-to-library partnership between the University of Toronto’s fully affiliated teaching hospital, Mount Sinai, and the AAU’s Central Medical Library at the Black Lion Hospital. The partnership agreement developed at this symposium between the Chief Medical Librarian and myself is posted at www.TAAAC.ca under the Programs tab, under Library Services. Our partnership addresses three goals to further develop medical library services and training in Ethiopia: