£9.5m medical training centre plan is a game-changer in Malawi’s medical future

A team of architects and engineers from Lancashire are working on a life-changing £9.5million project to deliver Malawi’s first specialist postgraduate medical training centre.

Leading structural engineering specialist TRP Consulting and architecture practice Cassidy + Ashton, based in Preston, are working on the initial design stages for the centre, which will also provide the most sophisticated research environment in the African country.

East African-based multi-disciplinary consultancy FBW Group, which also has strong links to the North West, is also involved in the project and is undertaking enabling surveys on the proposed site of the facility in the southern city of Blantyre.

The Clinical Research and Training Open Resource (Creator) project is a partnership between the University of Malawi’s College of Medicine (CoM), Queen Elizabeth's Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), the University of Liverpool and the medical research foundation Wellcome.

Malawi currently has around 600 clinical doctors to treat a population of 16 million people. The new centre will meet a critical need for further training and research opportunities, helping to halt the ‘brain drain’ that sees doctors leave the country to progress their careers.