MTIMA–CSE Medical Mission Bursary: Six Tickets, Fourteen Days, One Shared Classroom

Picture a carry-on packed for purpose: scrubs, a pocket atlas, a few small gifts for a ward staff room. In 2025, MTIMA and the Canadian Society of Echocardiography (CSE) are underwriting exactly that journey—six clinicians, each with a $6,000 bursary, headed to Malawi for 14 days of teaching, bedside practice, and the kind of collaboration that leaves skills behind when the plane goes home.

This isn’t aid as a photo op. It’s a quiet, practical exchange. Awardees will round with Malawian teams, tune echo technique until standard views become reflex, and help tighten the path from suspicion to decision—cleaner scans, clearer reports, quicker referrals. Afternoons that might have been another queue become small classrooms: a tricky apical view solved together; a muddled ECG made legible; a guideline translated into three steps that fit tomorrow’s clinic.

The bursary is a lever, not a prize. $36,000 total sounds modest until you see what it buys: airfare that doesn’t swallow a month’s salary, simple lodging close to the ward, insured travel, and enough room in the budget for teaching materials that actually get used. The real return shows up later—repeat scans that don’t repeat, referral letters that travel faster, a ward that breathes a little easier.

Applications for the 2025 cohort closed on December 2, 2024; selections are moving in phases. The first mission window is set: March 9–22, 2025, with Kimberly Weir and Maala Sooriyakanthan already oriented and bound for Blantyre. More awardees will follow as dates and service needs align. The common thread is simple: humility in the work, rigor in the craft, respect for the pace of the clinic.

What this program builds is not just capacity but community. Malawian clinicians bring context and constraint—the realities that keep guidelines honest. Visiting clinicians bring time and attention—the currencies most clinics lack. Between them, a shared habit takes shape: evidence turned into everyday care.

By the numbers (2025):
• 6 bursaries × $6,000 = $36,000 in direct support
• 14 in-country days per clinician (teaching + clinical service)
• First mission window: Mar 9–22, 2025 (Kimberly Weir, Maala Sooriyakanthan)
• Focus: bedside echo training, ECG interpretation, referral pathway tightening