Thomas Mackey (BSN ‘74) works
with the Clinton Health Access
Initiative to help train nurses in Rwanda.
ALUM IN THE FI E LD
Health care education in rebuilt Rwanda
Nurses from Indonesia and Vietnam study at Loyola in order to become certified to teach other health workers in their home countries.
cation around the world. Alumnus Thomas Mackey (BSN ’74), a long- time nursing professor at the Uni- versity of Texas School of Nursing at Houston, is working with a team of educators from around the country to enhance medical and nursing education in Rwanda. The nurs- ing part of the initiative, organized through a partnership between the Rwandan government and the Clin- ton Health Access Initiative, aims to send American professors to live and work in Rwanda in order to educate and upgrade the certification level, over the course of seven years, of all of the country’s 6,600 nurses. Mackey, who is spearheading the
C
International nursing students get a real sense of Loyola life— at the ‘L’ stop.
efforts of the nursing component for the University of Texas School of Nursing, has long been committed to health care overseas. In the late 1960s, he spent two years doing medical work in the Democratic Re- public of the Congo in the aftermath of a 1964 rebellion. “I was a 19-year-old kid deliver- ing babies. I was learning what I was
urrent faculty and students aren’t the only Loyolans working for improved nursing edu-
doing by looking at medical books,” Mackey recalls. The experience was both shock-
ingly different from what he had known in the U.S. and hugely forma- tive. Mackey remained involved in international activities, and has since been to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. When he was approached, be-
cause of his interests and experience (he also speaks French and Swahili), about the new collaboration in Rwanda, he initially had his doubts. “I was skeptical at first because of
the lack of support I experienced in the Congo,” he says. But he went to visit anyway, and was surprised to find that the country and its infra- structure far exceeded his expecta- tions. He became convinced that the health initiative could be successful. The first U.S. educators are expected to be on the ground in Rwanda in the spring of 2012. Mackey, who received the Damen
Award from Loyola in 2007, is facili- tating the nursing component from the University of Texas for the time being, although he says he may find himself spending a year in Rwanda at some point.
FALL 2011
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