The Gozo vaccination roll out is being supported by student and staff volunteers from Queen Mary University of London, Malta Campus, who are supporting the Health Department to provide vaccinations, from the newly opened Covid-19 vaccine centre in Victoria.

This forms part of the Covid-19 response work that the Medical School has been actively supporting since the first lockdown in March 2020.

The Medical School is providing trained student and staff volunteers to support the vaccine roll out in Gozo.

It explained that students and staff are working in shifts at the clinic, Monday to Friday 8am-1pm and will administer up to 800 vaccinations a day. The Medical School is planning to send up to eight volunteers a day.

Professor Catherine Molyneux, Deputy Dean at Queen Mary University of London, Malta Campus, said, “when we reached out to our students and staff with a call for volunteers to recruit for the vaccine clinic, the response was overwhelming.”

She added that, “we are proud as a School to have the resources in place to be able to support not only the current Covid-19 response work but also other initiatives that support the local community.”

The Medical School said that it has been actively supporting Covid-19 initiatives in order to aid the local community at this trying time.

In October the “Mental Wellbeing in Covid Times” conference, in partnership with the Mental Health Association Gozo (MHAG) was held online and delved deeply and comprehensively into the issues specifically affecting Maltese and Gozitan people around Covid-19.

At this time, the Medical School also launched free Mindful Art Workshops, open to all and designed to assist mental resilience.

Further, the Medical School said that it provided additional space to Gozo General Hospital, to enable the hospital to provide safer care while catering for Covid-19 patients.

It went on to say that these initiatives are part of series that the Medical School has implemented throughout the year and falls within Queen Mary University of London culture of contributing to the local community through research, volunteering, partnerships or sharing resources.

Since the official opening in Gozo, Queen Mary, Malta Campus “has been proactively establishing and supporting local partnership and collaborative projects in the local community,” it said.

Alfred Xerri, Senior Nurse Manager, Gozo General Hospital said, “participating in this pandemic mass vaccination campaign is a unique lifelong experience for the Queen Mary, Malta Campus medical students and a best community medical health practice.”

“Medical students are assigned and practising different tasks, such as documentation, clinical practice, quality assurance, interpersonal skills, communication, and teamwork,” he added.

Xerri concluded by saying that “their participation in this mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 virus at the Aurora Expo and Conventions Centre is proving to be essential to our island’s community.”

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