Dr. Christelle Jouego Tagne: newly elected student representative in ITM’s General Council

ITM has the pleasure to congratulate and present Christelle Geneviève Jouego Tagne (Cameroon), the freshly elected student representative in ITM’s General Council for the 2024–2028 term. Christelle is the third ITM student elected to assume the role of student representative in the General Council 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 the newly elected ITM student representative in the General Council and highlight her motivation to act as representative of ITM’s global student community.

The announcement of the election results is the perfect opportunity to present the newly elected ITM student representative in the General Council 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 program (2018-2020).

In 2021, she graduated from the first batch of the ITM Master of Sciences in Tropical Medicine (MTM), during which she gained interesting knowledge on conducting clinical research mainly in the field of tropical medicine while getting to know more and understand ITM policies and core principles.

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 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 gained over time, molded in the education frame of ITM, coupled with her dynamism and bilingualism (English and French), will enable her to fully assume the position of student representative at the General council.

As a first reaction to her election as ITM student representative in the General Council, Christelle states: “ Thank you for your overwhelming support! I'm deeply committed to representing the diverse voices of our student body on the General Council. Let’s work together to be the change we want through ITM in the World”

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

ITM wishes her an enriching and constructive experience in ITM’s General Council with many exciting and fruitful exchanges and collaborations.