WTW students join Dar locals on a breast cancer awareness campaign.

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

On the 25th April 2010, the Tanzania Breast Cancer Foundation (TBCF) organised a charity walk to raise awareness of breast cancer in Tanzania. WTW joined hands to contribute, with four of our students participating in the event.

280410During the walk 122x122 custom WTW students join Dar locals on a breast cancer awareness campaign.

Radia and Oluwatoyin walk through Dar

It is estimated that 2,500 women with breast cancer register as patients in hospitals around the country each year. If discovered well in early stages breast cancer can be managed and women can live longer and happily. Unfortunately MEWATA ((medical women association of Tanzania) published research in 2009 showed that there were nearly 2500 new cases of breast cancer diagnosed, most of which had a late diagnosis so were relatively advanced.

280410with other participants 150x150 WTW students join Dar locals on a breast cancer awareness campaign.

Raising awareness for the campaign

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The weekly question: How did our students choose their destination?

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Abby, our projects advisor, is always answering calls or meeting students at medical fairs that just don’t know where they want to go.  With such a good range of destinations, all of which have some amazing selling points, it’s easy to understand why it can be almost impossible to choose where you want to spend your time. To help you make your decision, we asked our students “how did you decide your elective or placement destination and are you happy with your choice?”.

Kat Fisher Lake Victoria can send bigger jess with children 150x150 The weekly question: How did our students choose their destination?

Africa is a popular choice

For most, the decision seemed to lie between Africa and Asia as a whole. We had a large group of Chinese students from Hong Kong, who chose Africa and were split between our two Northern Tanzania destinations.  Grace Ng said “when planning my elective, I wanted to find a place where I could be exposed to things that I’ve never seen before. I choose Africa as I believe after this elective I’m not likely to have another chance to experience the medical side of this place again. Besides, I would also like to know and feel more on how people in other parts of the world live”. Wong Ka Wai also felt that as as a student from Hong Kong, “I wanted to go to a developing country to get to know more about their disease and gain more hand on experience. On the other hand I wanted to go to Africa to have a look. I am quite happy with my choice as this is a brand new experience so far”. Rutherford was the same – he has always had an “immense interest in developing countries. It is fascinating to see the people there work their way to the top through diligence and hard work. Tanzania is a place full of opportunity so I wish to explore more of it. I m very satisfied with the choice and am making the most out of the trip”.

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The move to Dar

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

The relocation of the programme from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam has finally been completed and the first students arrived over the Easter weekend. The Dar programme boasts the biggest Work the World house so far with a capacity to comfortably accommodate 37 students at anyone time, and we’re already completely booked up for some of the summer!

P9240123 150x150 The move to Dar

Arriving on ferry to Dar

The move was quite a mission! 6 lorries and several ferry trips were needed, so Dave flew over to Dar to help Majenda and Baptista. “Apart from a small problem with the ferries – in that they were closed for the public holidays at the exact time we had planned to transport all the furniture over – everything went like clockwork (well African clockwork anyway!) and for a few days we were truly on the move!”

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What are the biggest cultural challenges…

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Now that the houses are getting busy again and our new programme managers in Ghana, Nepal and Dar & Zanzibar are settled in, we’re getting lots of stories back about student experiences living and working overseas. Although in some ways there are many similarities to living and working in a developing country regardless of the destination you are in, there are also some fascinating differences triggered by the culture of each country. To highlight these differences and help anyone out who is still trying to decide which destination suits them best, each week I send the same question to each of our programme managers to discuss with the students at dinner. The responses are always hugely varied and regularly make fascinating reading….

This weeks big question was “What are the biggest cultural challenges you have found living overseas?”

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Placement preparation in Dar es Salaam

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Baptista has been busy working with one of Dar’s biggest government hospitals to secure some amazing placements in all the major disciplines. He gave me a bit more information about the hospital and what students can expect out of placements:

“This hospital is the biggest referral hospital in the country and offers our students some fantastic opportunities. It treats both private and regional referral patients from all over Tanzania, so the departments will see an enormous variety of conditions, and with almost 2500 beds we know it is going to be busy!

NMH MOI 5 150x150 Placement preparation in Dar es Salaam

The hospital in Dar

Although it was originally one big hospital, they now have a separate centre for orthopaedics.  Tanzania always has busy orthopaedics wards because of the huge number of accidents on the road and in mines.  This separate centre makes treating patients far more efficient and allows us to arrange specific placements in orthopaedics, neural surgery, traumatology and physiotherapy.

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The adventure continues… in Brighton!

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

It was with great excitement that the whole team (well apart from Nicole our newbie) squished ourselves into the taxi at 4.30pm yesterday and headed off to Gatwick ready for the annual Work the World conference in Tanzania.

It started well… access into the members lounge for pre departure snacks and as much herbal tea / wine and cheese as you could fit into half an hour! Dave has to fly so much with work that they have given him special access and he was able to arrange for us to join him. A good way to start what sounded like it would be an amazing week. From hospitals to houses to safaris, we were going to see everything our three Tanzania programmes have to offer students.

Being delayed while you are waiting in comparative luxury is no biggy, particularly as we had a three hour transit in Dubai with no lounge access! But, as 19.15 boarding became 19.40 and then they announced we wouldn’t be called until 20.10, we started to get worried. The weather forecast had suggested snow storms and we wanted to make sure we were up in the sky way before the sky came down on us.

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