“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”: A call for a Nordic engagement in the development of family medicine in Africa

community orientation, comprehensive care, and clinical leadership, these specialists have important prerequisites to strengthen a patient-centred approach to health care in their districts. The Danish College of General Practitioners is supporting the further education of family physicians in Rwanda through clinical mentoring under the family medicine curriculum at the National University of Rwanda. The programme is initiated under “ Partners in Practice ” – an International Development Programme of the Danish College of General Practitioners [4], which recruits Danish GPs to partake in projects to support and capacity-build emerging family medicine institutions in partner countries. In Malawi, three Norwegian Universities (Oslo, Bergen, Troms ø ) are aspiring to become involved as key facilitators of the development of family medicine. This project is designed to support the development of the academic discipline of family medicine, in order to improve the quality of and access to primary care for the people of Malawi, particularly by establishing appropriate, district-based specialty training in family medicine for doctors, as well as facilitating the development of an academic Department of Family Medicine [5]. During the last few years the Ministry of Health in Norway, the University of Gezira, Sudan, and the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, University of Bergen, have collaborated on a project aimed at educating specialists in family medicine. So far about 200 local doctors are enrolled in this novel two-year master ’ s programme, which relies heavily on web-based teaching and communication [3,6].