University of Makeni (formerly known as the Fatima Institute and often known as UNIMAK) is the first

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, university located in

Makeni Makeni is the largest city in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. The city is the capital of Bombali District, and is the economic center of the Northern Province. Makeni is the fifth largest city in Sierra Leone by population. The city of M ...

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

History

It was founded as the Fatima Institute on October 8, 2005, by the

Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Makeni led by Reverend George Biguzzi (born 1936, Italy). In August 2009, it was granted university status and took its present name. Owned by the Diocese of Makeni, and the Bishop of Makeni is the university chancellor. In 2011, along with City of Rest and the Community Association for Psychosocial Services (CAPS), UNIMAK became a founding member of the Mental Health Coalition (MHC) of Sierra Leone. Specializing in mental health service provision, academia, and advocacy, the consortium of organizations has been at the forefront of calls for reform of the mental health sector in Sierra Leone. Ebola restrictions forced a temporary closure of the University of Makeni between 2014 and 2016. In 2018, UNIMAK created an additional campus in the Koinadugu District of Sierra Leone. The campus is located in Kabala Town and UNIMAK is the first University to have begun operations in the district. In 2018, the university's application fees were eliminated for application forms as part of an initiative championed by President

Julius Maada Bio Julius Maada Wonie Bio (born 12 May 1964) is a Sierra Leonean politician, and the current president of Sierra Leone since 4 April 2018. He is a retired brigadier general in the Sierra Leone Army and was the military head of state of Sierra Leo ...

to improve access to higher education for young people. In 2019, the university became a founding member of the First Responder Coalition of Sierra Leone (FRCSL), with the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society, LFR International, the Holy Spirit Hospital, and

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(ARCT). The Coalition's mission was to "facilitate the development of emergency first responder programs to alleviate the burden of traumatic injury in Sierra Leone."

Governance

The university is privately owned by the Emeritus of the Catholic Diocese of Makeni and is the first private university in the country owned by the Catholic Mission. It is also governed by members of the Makeni University Governing Council.

Programs

As a research-oriented university, there is a large breadth to the research being conducted at UNIMAK.

Public health

Representatives from the University of Makeni and

Makerere University Makerere University, Kampala (; Mak) is Uganda's largest and oldest institution of higher learning, first established as a technical school in 1922. It became an independent national university in 1970. Today, Makerere University is composed of n ...

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...

met with academics from the School of Public Health at the

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

to discuss building institutional capacities to provide public health education. The partnership has helped build the health education program at the university.

Ebola

In 2015, during the latter stages of the

Ebola crisis The 2013–2016 epidemic of Ebola virus disease, centered in Western Africa, was the most widespread outbreak of the disease in history. It caused major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia a ...

outbreak, researchers from the

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and

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studying unconventional transmission of

Ebola Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after becom ...

by sequencing the virus in real-time initially constructed temporary genome sequencing facilities to provide in-country sequencing capabilities to process patient samples from Makeni. Since the end of the crisis, the facilities have since been moved to the university, where they have formed the UNIMAK Infectious Disease Research Laboratory. The laboratory provides training for local scientists and students, crucial to sequencing and managing continued Ebola cases in Makeni without international collaborators present. UNIMAK has been a leader in the PREDICT Ebola Host Project, as one of two Sierra Leonean institutions involved in the project (the other being

Njala University Njala University (NU) is a public university located in Njala and Bo, Sierra Leone. It is the second largest university in Sierra Leone (after the Fourah Bay College) and is also part of the University of Sierra Leone. The largest and main camp ...

). The PREDCIT project is a

USAID The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...

-funded project headquartered at the UC-Davis

One Health Institute The One Health Institute works at the interface of animals, people, plants, and the environment to solve complex problems that impact health and conservation around the world. The institute is part of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine an ...

. Subsequent to the Ebola Crisis, two groups began searching for hemorrhagic disease reservoirs in West Africa to preempt future crises. One group was led by the

CDC The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georg ...

and Njala University, while the other was led by UC-Davis and UNIMAK. As a result of the project, scientists were able to discover an Ebola virus species (

Marburg Virus Marburg virus (MARV) is a hemorrhagic fever virus of the '' Filoviridae'' family of viruses and a member of the species '' Marburg marburgvirus'', genus '' Marburgvirus''. It causes Marburg virus disease in primates, a form of viral hemorrhagi ...

) in a host (fruit-eating bats) prior to detection in an infected human or sick animal for the first time ever.

Special needs educators program

UNIMAK is currently the only university in Sierra Leone to offer special needs teacher training. The absence of special needs teachers in Sierra Leone to educate disabled children has become a priority for the Ministry of Education, having assured the government that it is championing policy for the expansion of these programs in Parliament based on UNIMAK's programs.

References

External links

*http://universityofmakeni.com/wordpress/ {{authority control

Makeni Universities and colleges in Sierra Leone 2005 establishments in Sierra Leone