The Medical Students’ Aid Project, University of New South Wales (Australia)

The Medical Students’ Aid Project (MSAP) received Honorable Mention in the 2025 MacJannet Prize. MSAP is a global health group run by medical students at the University of New South Wales, Sydney (UNSW). MSAP is dedicated to advancing healthcare equity both locally and globally through education, advocacy, and collaboration.

MSAP’s flagship initiative, the Elective Aid Program, empowers students to deliver essential medical equipment to hospitals in low-resource settings during their overseas electives. In 2024/25, MSAP supported seven hospitals across Cambodia, India, Samoa, Tanzania, the Solomon Islands, and Sri Lanka, providing AUD 3,500 worth of supplies, including computers for electronic medical records, stethoscopes, otoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, sutures, and pediatric glycerin suppositories.

Through projects like the Elective Aid Program, MSAP offers students hands-on exposure in global health while making a tangible difference in underserved communities.

Twenty four years since its establishment, MSAP continues its legacy of student-led education and advocacy for global health issues. Their portfolio has since expanded to also include the following projects:

1. The Food for Thought project, launched at Seem Shala Jibhaipura in Gujarat, India, provides funding for basic health education and checkups for students. A study in the AMSA Journal of Global Health found that during the program, school enrollments increased by 32%, stunting decreased by 16%, and both height-for-age and weight-for-age Z scores improved by 0.40 (p<0.001)—a testament to the value of financial provision of food and health checkups for underprivileged children.

2. One of our team members, Lokesh Sharma, realized how inadequate toilet facilities were a critical barrier to girls’ education in rural India. To address this issue, MSAP fundraised $18,000 for the Gandhi Girls’ Sanitation Project to finance a 12-toilet block and two water tanks at Kanya Vidya Mandir, a village school for over 250 girls. Students like Lokesh are motivated to join and lead MSAP by a passion for specific healthcare challenges and are able to mobilize the society to achieve great accomplishments for disadvantaged communities.

3. Global Health Short Course is a four-week education series that brings together medical students and experts in the global health field to explore pressing challenges in the area. The course features interactive workshops, panel discussions, and stimulations on topics such as disaster response, antimicrobial resistance, and medical implications on climate change etc. The importance of this course is recognized by global health leaders whom MSAP has partnered with, noting that it fills a significant gap in teaching amongst most medical school curricula and equips students with the knowledge and skills to act as global citizens in their practice of medicine in the future.

“Millon thanks for the supplies received with so much gratitude, these are so much appreciated as we here are in need of it. From GSH staff thanks from the heart.”

– Good Samaritan Hospital, Solomon Islands, one of our partnering hospital for the Elective Aid Program