Electives in Tanzania

In Dar es Salaam you’ll see conditions you’ve never seen before like cerebral malaria and cholera. You can experience departments you might not have seen too. These include paediatrics, the infectious diseases unit, theatre, and specialist surgical wards like neurosurgery. There are unique opportunities on the psychiatric ward and in anaesthesiology too. You can focus in on specific areas of interest like paediatric HIV, or spend time in lots of departments to get an interdepartmental understanding of nursing in Tanzania. You will see some local students here too, so you can talk about the differences between nursing education too. If you're interested in nursing electives in Africa, Tanzania is a great option.

In Dar es Salaam, HIV and related cases are considerable issues. As such, you can attend an HIV clinic to get insight into how the condition is treated in a low-resource environment. Of course, you can also see how Tanzanian medicine is practised in areas like paediatrics, surgical wards like neurosurgery, and the infectious diseases unit. Speaking of infectious diseases, both communicable and non-communicable diseases are treated in A&E, with little attention paid to infection control. We also have fantastic opportunities on the psychiatric ward and in anaesthesiology. If you're looking for a medical elective in Africa, you should add Tanzania to your shortlist.

Your Work the World placement here will give you a good idea of what life is like for a Tanzanian midwife. You might choose to spend time in areas you know, like neonatal intensive care, theatre, postnatal ward and the labour ward. Or you might feel like pushing yourself by visiting specialist areas like the OBG department’s dedicated HIV ward. You’ll be supervised by local midwives, but you’ll also make friends with Tanzanian healthcare students doing their placements at the same time as you. They will help explain why local practises are so different from what you experience at home. Don’t be surprised if you see things like doctors applying fundal pressure to help women deliver!

If you do your elective placement in Dar es Salaam, you’ll see patients who’ve sustained injuries from mining accidents, RTAs, and even construction and logging accidents. You’ll see that the equipment in the department is outdated, similar to some of our other destinations. Physiotherapy in Tanzania is very different to what you'll see at home. Resources are very low, which makes it hard for local therapists to effectively help patients. Despite this, therapists still manage to provide good rehabilitation for most of their patients.

In Dar es Salaam, you can get experience in A&E, or surgery. Or both. Your placement here is in a national referral hospital that hosts the main A&E department in the city. That means cases are often serious. As this is the only department of its kind in Tanzania, some patients travel from hundreds of miles away to be seen, even in an emergency. You’ll see a lot in terms of cases, sepsis with multi-organ failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cerebral malaria, metabolic disorders, polytrauma, blunt trauma, and penetrating trauma are all on the list. If you’re looking for an elective in Africa, Tanzania is a great choice.

Radiography students most quickly notice the lack of resources in Dar es Salaam, with particular reference to equipment, when faced with analysing cancers. Radiotherapy is rarely offered in hospitals, meaning patients have to travel far and wide to seek care in specialist centres like our partner institutions. This placement is one of great diversity. You’ll see an extraordinary range of cancers, fractures, trauma, road traffic accidents, tuberculosis and HIV related cases, and more. You’ll also witness a stark contrast in the procedural aspects of your field. For example, patients are often treated without immobilisation.

You’ll do your Work the World dental elective in the dentistry department in one of Dar es Salaam’s best tertiary referral hospitals. Your options span oral surgery and oral pathology, preventative and community dentistry, and restorative dentistry. In the oral surgery and oral pathology department, you can sit in on oral surgeries and join staff on their weekly ward rounds. In preventative and community dentistry, you can head out into the city with Tanzanian dentistry students. In the restorative dentistry department, you can get involved in four units — cariology, prosthodontics, periodontology, and dental biomaterials. If you’re interested, you can get experience with paedodontics too.

Trained professionals, hailing from a number of disciplines, staff the rehabilitative medicine department in our main partner hospital. The department receives both inpatients and outpatients, and (on average) sees around 20 patients per day. You can also head out with the team to help conduct home visits. The team also have a presence in the ICU. Typical cases that the rehabilitative medicine department receives include strokes, cerebral palsy, back pain, neuropathies, nerve injuries, contractures, arthritis, and post-eclampsia, to name but a few. If you're looking for an elective in Africa, Tanzania is a great option.