Students and staff from Queen Mary University of London, Malta Campus are supporting the Department of Health to provide vaccinations, from the newly opened COVID-19 vaccine centre in Victoria Gozo. This forms part of the Covid-19 response work that the Medical School has been actively supporting since the first lockdown in March 2020.
The Medical School is providing trained student and staff volunteers to support the vaccine roll out in Gozo. Students and staff are working in shifts at the clinic from Monday 22 March, Monday to Friday 8am-1pm and will administer up to 500 vaccinations a day. The Medical School is planning to send up to eight volunteers a day.
Professor Catherine Molyneux, Deputy Dean at Queen Mary University of London, Malta Campus, said:
“When we reached out to our students and staff with a call for volunteers to recruit for the vaccine clinic, the response was overwhelming. We are proud as a School to have the resources in place to be able to support not only the current Covid-19 response work but also other initiatives that support the local community”.
The Medical School has been actively supporting Covid-19 initiatives in order to aid the local community at this trying time. In October the “Mental Wellbeing in Covid Times” conference, in partnership with the Mental Health Association Gozo (MHAG) was held online and delved deeply and comprehensively into the issues specifically affecting Maltese and Gozitan people around Covid-19. At this time, the Medical School also launched free Mindful Art Workshops, open to all and designed to assist mental resilience. Further, the Medical School provided additional space to Gozo General Hospital, to enable the hospital to provide safer care while catering for Covid-19 patients.
These initiatives are part of series that the Medical School has implemented throughout the year and falls within Queen Mary University of London culture of contributing to the local community through research, volunteering, partnerships or sharing resources. Since the official opening in Gozo, Queen Mary, Malta Campus has been proactively establishing and supporting local partnership and collaborative projects in the local community.
Alfred Xerri, Senior Nurse Manager, Gozo General Hospital said:
“Participating in this pandemic mass vaccination campaign is a unique lifelong experience for the Queen Mary, Malta Campus medical students and a best community medical health practice. Medical students are assigned and practicing different tasks, such as documentation, clinical practice, quality assurance, interpersonal skills, communication, and teamwork. Their participation in this mass vaccination campaign against covid-19 virus at the Aurora Expo and Conventions Centre is proving to be essential to our island’s community.”
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At Queen Mary University of London, we believe that a diversity of ideas helps us achieve the previously unthinkable.
Throughout our history, we’ve fostered social justice and improved lives through academic excellence. And we continue to live and breathe this spirit today, not because it’s simply ‘the right thing to do’ but for what it helps us achieve and the intellectual brilliance it delivers.
Our reformer heritage informs our conviction that great ideas can and should come from anywhere. An approach has brought results across the globe, from the communities of east London to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
We continue to embrace diversity of thought and opinion in everything we do, in the belief that when views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes form.
The Queen Mary, Malta campus has the honour of being the first medical school located on Gozo.
The building of the Medicine School was managed by Steward Healthcare and completed in October 2019. Queen Mary, Malta Campus staff and students moved from our former home of 2 years at the Sir M.A Refalo 6th Form College into the new Queen Mary, Malta Campus on 26th October 2019. The state-of-the-art campus is situated on the grounds of Gozo General Hospital and features access to a 21st century Anatomy Centre.
The Medical School in its fourth year of operation with 178 students currently enrolled from 42 different nationalities and 29 members of staff.