Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1473504
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 JULY 2022 12 COMMERCIAL Steward Malta congratulates first 19 graduates from Queen Mary University of London's Malta campus STEWARD Health Care Malta is proud to have played an impor- tant role towards the achieve- ments of 19 graduates who were recently conferred their degree in Bachelor of Medicine, Bache- lor of Surgery (MBBS) during the first ever graduation ceremony held for students attending the Queen Mary University of Lon- don's (QMUL) Malta Campus. The ceremony took place at the historic Cittadella in Gozo. The Queen Mary Malta Cam- pus, known also as Barts Med- ical School, is the first medical school located in Gozo specifical- ly within the precincts of Stew- ard's Gozo General Hospital in Victoria. The construction of the Medical School was managed by Steward Health Care Malta over 18 months, and completed in October 2019. It features state- of-the-art medical educational facilities including also an Anat- omy Centre. The goal of the school is to sup- port the Maltese Government's activities in upgrading healthcare across the Maltese islands, par- ticularly in Gozo. The Barts cam- pus was part of a holistic project to update the health care facilities on the island with wider benefits for the island's economy. In ad- dition, the setting up of this ac- ademic institution firmly placed Gozo on the global map in terms of medical education, research and innovation. "We congratulate the QMUL and the class of 2022, which were the first intake of the Barts Med- ical School, for this important milestone and we are honoured to have been part of this incred- ible journey. We consider QMUL students and staff to be an inte- gral part of the Gozo hospital and wider community. We are very happy with the ongoing and fruitful collaboration with the QMUL and look forward to more graduation celebrations in the coming years," said Dr Nadine Delicata, President of Steward Health Care Malta, who attended the graduation ceremony. QMUL offers its internationally renowned five-year MBBS pro- gramme to students from all over the world. A total of 237 students from 51 different countries, in- cluding Malta, attend the course. The 19 students who graduated this year with MBBS degrees rep- resented 12 countries including the UK, Belgium, Cayman Is- lands, Uganda, Philippines, Aus- tria, Malta, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ireland and Canada. Over the past years, the stu- dents and the staff of the Queen Mary Malta Campus have taken part in various community ini- tiatives and outreaches in Gozo, such as supporting the Depart- ment of Health in providing vac- cinations from the COVID-19 vaccine centre in Victoria, Gozo. In addition the Medical School hosted a "Mental Wellbeing in COVID Times" conference, in partnership with the Mental Health Association Gozo, as well as provided additional space to Gozo General Hospital to enable the hospital to provide safer care while catering for COVID-19 pa- tients. The 19 Queen Mary University of London's Malta Campus graduates who were recently conferred their degree in Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery during the first ever graduation ceremony held in Cittadella, Gozo MeDirect supports Project Maleth II space mission for bioscience experimentation MEDIRECT, Malta's first digital bank, is a proud supporter of Pro- ject Maleth II, the second mis- sion under space bioscience ex- periment Project Maleth which was launched in 2021 to inves- tigate the effects of spaceflight and microgravity on diabetic foot ulcer skin tissue samples together with the microbiome. This is a full collection of bacte- ria, viruses and fungi that live off the skin and may be harmful if wound ulcers develop, such as in the case of patients with diabetes mellitus type 2. The Maleth Program is the first Maltese space bioscience project led by Professor Joseph Borg from the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Malta. Maleth II was launched on 15 July 2021. "Maleth II boarded a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for the launch as part of Commercial Re-sup- ply Mission 25 (CRS25) and will stay in orbit for around 50 to 60 days", said Prof Borg. The Maleth II bio cube will once again be re- motely controlled from Malta by Arkafort Ltd in collaboration with Prof. Borg and can provide real-time telemetry data on the running experiment on board the space station. Prof Borg also explained: "Alongside the human skin tis- sue samples to study the micro- biome involved in diabetes, there is also a yeast sample that forms part of an ongoing mini-project supported by Singleron Biotech- nologies to detect at a single cell level all the genetic changes in- side the yeast cells when exposed to low earth orbit conditions." Chris Portelli, Group CTO of MeDirect Bank, stated: "MeDi- rect is proud to be a partner in this exciting Maltese research project. MeDirect is driven by research and innovation and believes that research projects like Project Maleth II is the driv- er behind innovation. Similar- ly, single-cell analysis can be a powerful innovative tool in un- derstanding the impact of space trips on biological organisms. This project is also being con- ducted with the support of the Ministry for Foreign and Euro- pean Affairs, the Ministry for Ed- ucation of Malta, and Singleron Biotechnologies. The mission is being facilitated by the Research, Innovation, Development Trust (RIDT) which will be supporting University of Malta students.