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Students Rachel Hounsell (South Africa), Adeniyi Aderoba (Nigeria), Sreymom Pol (Cambodia), Zay Yar Phyo Aung (Myanmar), Grace Mzumara (Malawi) and Feteh Fambombi Vitalis (Cameroon) describe what's like to be on the MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine

The highlight of the course for me has really been the people, we come from 21 different countries and a range of different backgrounds. So what’s really been exciting is being able to engage in different people’s experiences, their cultures and all the knowledge that they bring, it’s made the course really rich, that diversity that has made every class discussion and the way we engage just a really wonderful experience.

Apart from the academics, what I really find interesting is the professional training that goes along with this training. The media training experience is very unique, we’ve had various exposure to different leadership programmes. We were at the Houses of Parliament, we had debates at the Oxford Union, places where prime ministers of the United Kingdom have been to debates who had the experience at historical sites.

Many of us are from medical backgrounds and social science, engineering, and all we’ve been saying is OK, if we do international research by having everyone collaborating, that’s on of our dreams as well.

I am the 2nd one from my country Myanmar to join this course, and the very most exciting thing for me throughout this course is to have a connection with people from various parts of the world and that diversity and the warmth that they provide and by the course it’s extraordinary. And I think it is something we can learn a lot from everyone, and sometimes you don’t actually know what’s going on the other side of the world and this is a very unique chance for us to be able to understand everything.

So, I did my research placement in Bangkok, Thailand and just the experience of being to a middle income country and the contrast in what you learn from where I come from in Malawi to being in the UK and being in Thailand, that was a really great learning experience for me.

Well, the highlight of my time on this course and I’m sure the feeling will be echoed by many of my colleagues is the Houses of Parliament visit, where you had to present a real policy brief to real lawmakers. Which is actually what we came here to learn, to be able to present our research findings to the general public, and to those who will be able to use it to improve the life of the common man on the street.