The proposed association between Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), could be a 5,000 mile two-way street. As MSM students would be able to increase their exposure to traditional healing, KNUST students would have the opportunity to increase their knowledge of western medicine.

In efforts to establish a collaborative relationship between MSM and KNUST, a delegation from the Ghanaian institution recently visited MSM.

The group was invited to MSM's main campus Friday, Aug. 31, 2007 on behalf of the new MSM Global Health Task Force.

According to Assistant Professor Community Health and Preventive Medicine, Global Health Task Force Chair Kofi Kondwani, Ph.D., traditional healers are a very important part of African tradition and culture and more than 80 percent of Africans are treated with traditional medicine. "Most people in Africa go to a traditional healer before they seek a western doctor and this gives us a chance to interact with the African community," Kondwani stated.

Like Kondwani, some members of the MSM faculty have studied traditional healing in places like Senegal.

The Ghanaian guests included KNUST Vice Chancellor Kwasi Adarkwa; Provost Architecture and Planning, Seth Opuni Asiama; KNUST School of Medicine Dean E. Tsiri Agbenyega; and Professor and Chair of Cancer Biology, Meharry Medical College, President, KNUST Alumni Association of North America, Samuel Adunyah, Ph.D. On hand to welcome the delegates were MSM President John E. Maupin Jr., D.D.S., M.B.A.; Dean and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Eve J. Higginbotham, M.D.; Professor of Family Medicine and Interim Director of National Center for Primary Care (NCPC) George Rust, M.D.; Professor of Clinical Community Health and Preventive Medicine and Director of the Master of Public Health Program Patricia Rodney, Ph.D., M.P.H; and Assistant Professor of Physiology, Nerimiah L. Emmett, Ph.D.

Kondwani added that the recent visit by the delegation may assist MSM- already a leader in international medicine- in development of a greater global perspective.

Community Health and Preventive Medicine Assistant Professor of Clinical CH/PH, Director of the Community Health Feasibility Study at MSM, Virginia Floyd, M.D., M.P.H., who is a member of the Global Health Task Force said "Morehouse School of Medicine has a large responsibility not only for Atlanta but for the entire world."

The new initiative also could allow MSM students to observe Ghanaian culture and medicine.