We have deliberately chosen to offer the country structural help, by ensuring that more young, talented Mozambicans can undergo medical training so that they can go on to heal their own nation. As the Japanese proverb says, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’  

Working method

Doctors for Mozambique works in close cooperation with the faculty to select students who have not only achieved excellent marks at school but who are also motivated to spend seven years training to become doctors. The tuition fees are transferred directly to the university each year. Most students also receive a modest monthly living allowance from the foundation.

Most of the students the foundation supports come from rural areas.
There are a number of conditions attached to the scholarshipwe offer:

• The student must achieve excellent marks at secondary school
• The student must be motivated to bring his/her medical training to a successful conclusion
• The student’s parents/family are not able to afford the tuition fees
• The newly qualified doctor undertakes to donate part of his/her salary to the foundation for a number of years in order to help give others the opportunity to become doctors.

Because most of ‘our’ students come from rural areas, the foundation is careful to ensure that they receive good supervision in their first few years of training, while they are adjusting to life in a large city as well as the switch from secondary school to university. Good supervision helps reduce the chances of them dropping out to a minimum.

The government of Mozambique decides where the newly qualified doctor will work for the first 2 years following qualification. Since there is a serious shortage of doctors in rural areas, the government is currently sending all newly qualified doctors to rural areas to complete their mandatory community service.  So we can be sure that doctors whose training has been funded by Doctors for Mozambique will actually stay in Mozambique.