Dr Christelle Jouego Tagne: new student representative in ITM’s General Council

Dr Christelle Jouego Tagne is the third ITM student elected to assume the role of student representative in the General Council of ITM since its establishment on 31 January 2018. She will take over from Tapfumanei Mashe (Zimbabwe). The announcement of the election results is the perfect opportunity to present Christelle and highlight her motivation to act as representative of ITM’s global student community.

Christelle is a Cameroonian physician with nine years of field and leadership experience at peripheral and national level on tuberculosis and HIV in her homeland. She worked as an MD Consultant at the Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory Bamenda, Cameroon (2016-2018) and as a national referral clinician for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) at the Cameroon National Tuberculosis programme (2018-2020).

In 2021, she graduated from the MSc in Tropical Medicine (MTM) at ITM. During her studies, she gained interesting knowledge on conducting clinical research mainly in the field of tropical medicine, while getting to know more about the policies and core principles of ITM.

Currently, Christelle is enrolled as a PhD student under the DGD sandwich scholarship programme between ITM, the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and the University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon. Moreover, she is one of the two ITM PhD student representatives, taking part in at least two student participation meetings annually (online or face to face). In the presence of ITM's management, student representatives of the different degrees discuss challenges faced by respective students related to the courses and their stay in Antwerp. She believes this experience, in combination with her dynamism and bilingualism (English and French), will enable her to fully assume the position of student representative in the General Council.

As a first reaction to her election, Christelle states:

“Thank you for your overwhelming support! I'm deeply committed to representing the diverse voices of our student body in the General Council. Let’s work together at ITM to be the change we want in the world.”

As student representative, Christelle will be contributing to ITM’s ambition to be a leading open and global campus in tropical medicine and international health.

We wish her an enriching and constructive experience in ITM’s General Council with many exciting and fruitful exchanges and collaborations!