Re-writing Pre-Clinical Medical Textbooks to Reflect Local Content - A Prerequisite for Building Better Clinicians in Africa

Innocent Abi and John Odo I

Abstract

Textbooks are vital tools in the training of medical students. In Africa, there is a huge deficit in terms of literary medical works compared to the western world. Ultimately, this leaves the aspiring African clinician at the mercy of the western authors when it comes to acquiring knowledge about local health issues. The textbooks we use in teaching preclinical medical students in Africa are by foreign authors which fail to adequately capture the local content. Poor funding of biomedical research by governments of African countries has left the output of local authors dismally low. Reliance on foreign authors in writing our pre-clinical textbooks has left some disconnect between the pre-clinical and clinical stage of the medical training in African medical schools. Paying close attention towards bridging this gap by stimulating African biomedical researchers towards developing pre-clinical medical textbooks that reflect the African peculiarities; is of topmost importance The current pre-clinical textbooks used for training medical students will need to be re-written (to fully reflect local content) if the quest for high quality clinicians in the continent will be realized.