In the southern African nation of Malawi, the ability to save lives by accurately diagnosing and treating malarial seizures just got a little easier. In the past 12 months, officials from Michigan State University, working under the auspices of the school’s African Studies Center, set up a malaria studies center.
At the core of the center is a CAT scan machine MSU encouraged General Electric to donate to the Malawian people. In exchange for the donation, MSU agreed to pay for the construction of the climate-controlled building where the scanner is housed. The university dispatched several experts to Malawi to teach technicians and radiologists how to use the machine. Then the university installed a satellite dish to help those radiologists and technicians liaise regularly with their East Lansing , Mich., counterparts on particularly difficult cases. Malaria kills an estimated 1.5 million people in Africa each year, according to the World Health Organization.
Malawi’s neighboring countries—Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe—have no CAT scan machines either, making the malaria center the only location within hundreds of miles capable of providing the potentially life-saving service.
The malaria center is at the heart of the kind of work MSU’s African Studies Center has been engaged in on the African continent since the center was founded half a century ago. The university is marking the center’s 50th anniversary this year with a series of events that include large photo exhibits at one of the university’s museums.
The African Studies Center is the most comprehensive of its kind. Unlike many African studies programs that are rooted in liberal arts subjects like literature and history or in the social sciences like sociology and anthropology, MSU’s center has a wide-ranging focus. It works with more than 150 faculty specialists from 45 departments throughout the university, including nursing, medicine and engineering.
The center’s activities in more than 30 African countries have included partnerships and collaborations aimed at lowering incidents of river blindness and elephantiasis. It has offered training in medical ethics. Its specialists have engaged in epilepsy treatments in Zambia and sought to treat rare forms of ulcers in Ghana. It has worked to improve teacher education and math instruction in places like Egypt, Tunisia and South Africa. It also has participated on dozens of agricultural projects.
“What Michigan State did … and what I have tried to do here is replicate the fact that Africa should be represented in every department of the university,” says Dr. Steve Howard, director of the African studies program at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
