Dear PEHF donors and friends,

Dear IFMSA Alumni Family,

We would like first of all to take this opportunity and wish you all the best of health amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, which, unfortunately, is still causing a global disease burden.

Furthermore, we would like to inform you all about some recent developments in PEHF and its scholarship programme:

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the travel limitations thereof, we were not able to provide any scholarships for GA attendees for the past year 2020. We also did not launch any call for new applications, for the same reason. However, as an exception, in 2021, a decision was taken by the Board of Directors to assign one (1) GA scholarship to the 1st runner-up of the IFMSA Travel Assistance Fund (TAF) list of applicants. The 500EUR scholarship was assigned to Mr. Yahya Korteh from GaMSA-Gambia to enable him to attend the AM21 in Panama, since the AM21 was only intended as a physical meeting for NMO-heads. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, which could not be attributed to his wrongdoing, Mr. Korteh was unable to issue a visa for his travel and, eventually, did not travel to Panama. On the other hand, he made serious expenses buying his flight tickets and following the necessary visa application process. Therefore, after careful consideration, we decided not to revoke the assigned scholarship, but to reimburse Mr. Korteh for his expenses, up to 500EUR (that is 125EUR for his registration fee + 42EUR for visa expenses + 333EUR for flight tickets loss). We would like to share the whole process with you all, dear friends and supporters of PEHF, for transparency reasons, as well as to keep everyone on the same page, in terms of continuity. We truly hope that the COVID-19 crisis will soon be over, that it will remain only “a bad dream” in our memory, and that really soon, we shall be able to restart the usual PEHF function, enabling more IFMSA students to attend an international IFMSA GA, gain knowledge and expertise, and transfer this accumulated wealth back to their local communities.

Kind regards,

The PEHF Board of Directors