Healthcare Internships In Tanzania

On your medical internship in Tanzania, you can spend time in neurosurgery, oncology, and anesthesiology among others. If you choose less specific areas, you’ll observe and in some instances help to treat more advanced referrals. Whatever you choose, you’ll gain vital experience with everything from communicable diseases to advanced pathologies that you may have only come across in textbooks.

Clinical facilities in Dar es Salaam are among the best in Tanzania. As such you can choose to get a breadth of experience across multiple areas. This will give you a broad, interdepartmental understanding of how nursing is delivered in our partner hospital. Alternatively, you can focus on very specific areas of interest like pediatric HIV. The choice is yours entirely.

We have excellent relationships with our partner hospitals in Dar es Salaam. One such hospital is the largest tertiary referral hospital in the country. The maternity wards here are busy, offering you the chance to get experience with deliveries and in OBG. However, your internship is not limited to these areas. You can also get involved in more niche areas like neonatal intensive care, or learning how staff care for expectant mothers with HIV.

The biggest causes of serious and critical injury in Dar es Salaam are road traffic accidents (road safety standards and traffic etiquette are somewhat distinct from what you’re used to in the US). That said, you’ll still see a diverse range of injuries. For example, you might see patients who have been admitted as a result of mining accidents, or those who have suffered serious strokes, and more.

Tanzania’s healthcare system lacks funding, and so development progresses slowly. To give you some perspective, our partner hospital’s ED (still the only one of its kind in Tanzania) was only established in 2010. Needless to say, the department is busy all day every day. Emergency cases are referred from many miles away, but of course for some patients the distance is simply too far. Doctors and nurses here work irregular shifts, so you’ll learn from a variety of local staff. This adds to the breadth of experience you’ll get on an internship in Tanzania.

As a radiology student, you’ll quickly notice a lack of resource in Dar es Salaam. This is particularly true when it comes to both imaging and therapeutic equipment. For example, radiography is rarely offered in Dar es Salaam’s government hospitals, meaning patients have to travel far and wide to seek care in specialist centers. On an internship here you’ll not only see a range of cancers, but also fractures, trauma, RTAs, tuberculosis and HIV related cases. You’ll also observe the stark contrasts in practice. For example patients are often treated without immobilization.

You’ll undertake your internship in our partner health centre in Dar es Salaam. You will spend time in the  dental department, focusing in on whatever interests you. Examples include oral surgery, oral pathology, oral medicine, preventative and community dentistry, prosthodontics, periodontology, and cariology. You’ll observe many cases that are typical in Tanzania. For example, many people suffer from dental fluorosis as a result of water contamination and poor diet.

The rehabilitative medicine department in our partner hospital is staffed by specialists from a range of disciplines. The department sees inpatients and outpatient, making up an average of around 20 patients each day. The OT team is also stationed in ICU, so you can spend with critical patients. You may even have the opportunity to conduct home visits. Typical cases include strokes, cerebral palsy, back pain, neuropathies, nerve injuries, contractures, arthritis, and post eclampsia.