College of Medicine (COM) is a constituent college of the University of Malawi (UNIMA) which was established in 1991 with three main roles of training, research and service. Over the years COM has grown from a single faculty to three faculties training not only medical doctors but also other health professionals such as Pharmacists, Physiotherapists, Laboratory Technologists and the like and offering over 30 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. To date the college has graduated over 900 medical doctors. 

Knowing that it plays a greater role in the entire health services value chain of Malawi and the region, COM strives for excellence and as such provides a learning environment conducive to the pursuit of professional competency of healthy workers, research and service to the community. It has highly trained academic and professional services staff and good learning infrastructure.

COM has 3 campuses namely Blantyre (main campus), Lilongwe and Mangochi. It also collaborates with other international institutions in providing teaching, learning and research services.

CoM has had several academic achievements. It has been awarded several international prizes for its innovative undergraduate teaching programme. The Department of Community Health received the Association of African Universities’ Prize in 1994 for the introduction of a community-based Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) assessment for final MBBS exams. In 1998, 1999 and 2000 students have won 1st or 2nd prizes in the Tropical Health Education Trust/Reuter Prize for the best student research projects. A 1999 final year student won the first prize for the best student research project from the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, London.

The academic principles of the College of Medicine are that:-

• medical training, be community and public health based in order to reflect the health needs of Malawi;
• that learning should be “problem based” to foster an attitude of enquiry;
• that research should be directed to the medical challenges and diseases specific to Malawi;
• that as far as possible the undergraduate curriculum should be integrated both horizontally in the basic medical science disciplines as well as vertically in the clinical disciplines.
• The college is committed to a policy of gender equality.