Anna Morris, on behalf of the Dublin University Pharmaceutical Students’ Association, Dr Cristín Ryan, Dr Theo Ryan, and Michaela Brennan, on behalf of Trinity College Dublin’s ‘Family Pharmacy’ team
The Dublin University Pharmaceutical Students Association — or DUPSA for less of a mouthful — is the student Pharmacy Society of Trinity College Dublin. Although DUPSA does not have a specific mission statement, it does have an objective — “to study and promote the interests of pharmacy students in general”. Any student or staff member of Trinity may join the society, but its membership is mainly composed of around 200 undergraduate Pharmacy students.
The society’s committee of six are elected at an Annual General Meeting each April to conduct the Society’s business for the following year. Ultimately, DUPSA aims to benefit the Pharmacy students at Trinity, through organising social events, local and international trips, engaging with experts who give talks to enhance insights into topical issues, and providing career information — a mish-mash
of all the things that might intrigue a Pharmacy student.
The interests of DUPSA and its members extend beyond Trinity student wellbeing and education. The society’s goals encompass the betterment of pharmacy education, and benefit to pharmacy students, on a more global level. Trinity’s Pharmacy students and society recognise the necessity of access to pharmacists within communities.
This is one of the primary reasons why DUPSA has chosen to support a special project some 12,500km away, in the truly beautiful and incredibly different country of Malawi, the ‘warm heart of Africa’.
For anyone else struggling to visualise Malawi’s place among Africa’s 54 countries, it is a landlocked country in southeastern Africa, bordered by Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Although
the population is more than four times the size of ours in Ireland, Malawians have access to far fewer healthcare professionals. In 2024, the Department of Health reported a figure of 6,250 practising pharmacists in Ireland. Alarmingly, there are fewer than 200 pharmacists currently working in Malawi.
DUPSA recently became aware of a new programme called ‘Family Pharmacy’, which is due to launch in Malawi in 2026 in the Ekwendeni College of Health Sciences. The development of the programme is being supported by academic staff in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in TCD.
The programme is unique to Malawi. It allows for current Pharmacy Assistants and Pharmacy Technicians in Malawi to gain advanced pharmacy knowledge and skills tailored to the needs of their local communities. Students will engage in online learning, supported by on- campus training twice per semester. This allows students to keep their jobs and continue to work in community-based pharmacy services while studying. This facilitates practice-based learning and provides an attractive opportunity to existing pharmacy workers to upskill and expand the pharmacy care provided within their local communities. Suddenly, the possibility of more pharmacy care in Malawi seems more achievable.
However, students are still required to pay for university registration — a significant barrier to enrolment. The DUPSA committee asked themselves, ‘How can we help?’ The answer seemed obvious — what Malawian students deserved and needed was monetary aid, and thus a scholarship was founded.
DUPSA representatives met with academics from Malawi while they visited TCD during the summer. It was at this meeting that DUPSA noted their support and committed to partnering with Ekwendeni College to develop a DUPSA Malawi Studentship. DUPSA has been at the core of all meetings and decisions about the allocation of the scholarship and have also contributed ideas to curriculum design and delivery.
Plans are currently underway to form an ongoing partnership between DUPSA and the Ekwendeni College of Health Sciences. Terms and conditions of the scholarship are being established, in collaboration, to ensure its success. Each DUPSA scholarship will provide support to a student for the duration of the three-year programme. A full scholarship will amount to €700 per semester (approximately the cost of the programme) and will be allocated based on a combination of academic merit and financial means. These funds will be managed by the Ekwendeni College of Health Sciences.
The Family Pharmacy programme resonates with many of the core values of DUPSA — supporting and training Pharmacy students are at the heart of both. DUPSA’s support of this programme acknowledges the importance of pharmacists and pharmacy care in all corners of the world and speaks to the altruistic attributes which Trinity aims to instil in its students.
The first and principal fundraiser for the scholarship will come in the form of a table quiz at 6.30pm on Tuesday 18
November, in the Atrium, Panoz Institute, Westland Row, Dublin 2. A student table (from TCD or any university) will cost €20. Staff and newcomer tables will be €30. Further donations are welcome on the night. You can also donate to through the GoFundMe link here: https:// gofund.me/f0a781d72
The Malawian proverb mutu umodzi susenza denga means ‘you can’t solve the problem alone’. It is collective action that will make a difference. Please consider supporting us so we can help our friends and colleagues in Malawi.
Many thanks to Dr Joe Gallagher (GP), Dr Mark Ledwidge, and Dr Balwani Mbakaya for their outstanding contribution to this important project.
Denise, Helen, Balwani, Joe, and Maria, St John’s Hospital, Mzuzu
Theo, Jackson, Mark and Datsun on Mt Hora, Malawi
DUPSA committee L to R: Bonnie O’ Keeffe, Secretary; Neil Finn, Treasurer; Anna Morris, President; Luke Fitzgerald, Vice President; Saoirse Morgan, Public Relations Officer; and Will Doherty, Social Secretary
