News

In the classroom at Haukeland, two to three metres from where Indian student Thadigiri is sitting in front of his PC, stand the Germans Claas Vorhoff and René Dame with their film camera ready to capture student life in Bergen on film. The promotional film they are making is to be used to recruit students from countries in the South to the Erasmus Mundus programme in Europe. The film team is going to shoot in Norway, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Greece and Poland. Three students will represent Erasmus Mundus programmes in the fields of medicine, engineering and geology in the film.

“We are very happy that Bergen as a university town and the health programme at the Centre for International Health (CiH) are the subject of such attention,” says Unni Kvernhusvik, coordinator for the Erasmus Mundus programme.

Many nationalities in one place
Erasmus Mundus is an EU collaboration and mobility programme in higher education. The programme is intended to promote Europe as a good place to study, while at the same time meeting competition from universities in the USA. Erasmus Mundus students will attend three different universities in Europe during the space of a year in order to achieve a combined Master’s degree.
 
Professor Knut Martin Fylkesnes teaches at the three-week course in Observational Epidemiology which is attended by 41 students from 27 different countries. The students are either attached to the Erasmus Mundus programme, TropED – a research and education network comprising 28 institutions, are Master’s students in international health or research fellows. The activity level in classes is very high.

“We focus on population studies in undeveloped countries in this course. It is important be aware that estimate are often highly uncertain, for example as regards HIV infection. Most of the participants in the course are from undeveloped countries,” says the professor, who is himself engaged in research into HIV, in Zambia among other places.

Clinical approach to HIV
Praveen Kumar Thadigiri is taking the Master’s programme Tropical Medicine and Disease Control. In the space of one year, he will study at the University of Berlin, at the Centre for International Health at UiB and he will complete his Master’s studies by writing his dissertation at the University of Bordeaux.

Mr Thadigiri came to Bergen at the end of January after spending five months in Berlin. We manage to drag him away from class for a few minutes.

“I really like being here in Bergen; I think it’s beautiful here. By taking this Master’s degree, I am getting to know many people from different countries, and I am gaining first-hand experience of foreign cultures,” says Mr Thadigiri. He thinks the course in Clinical Management of HIV Infections in Bergen has been particularly instructive.

“The subject was more clinical than the others I have taken so far. We focused on how to actually treat and deal with people with HIV,” says Mr Thadigiri who is from Southern India and is educated as a doctor. In future, he would very much like to work for an international health organisation in his home country and in the surrounding region, or perhaps also in African countries.

“Twelve effective months”
Mr Thadigiri thinks that the production of a promotional film is a good project because it is a good opportunity to inform others about the programme. Life in Bergen will take up a total of about three to four minutes of the 15 to 20-minute-long film being made by Claas Vorhoff and his cameraman. After filming teaching in the Haukeland area, they will be heading down to the city centre to get some footage of Bergen. In the evening they will film social life in the city in the form of beer drinking at the student watering hole, Kvarteret.

“As I see the students, they are industrious and put in a lot of effort. It seems like they have a lot to get through in a short time. And, not least, they don’t have long in each place, so I think it is impressive how much they achieve in the space of 12 months,” says Claas Vorhoff.