Electives In Zambia

In Lusaka, you’ll see unfamiliar tropical diseases like acute malaria, and haematological afflictions like sickle cell. There are also incredible opportunities in the cancer and diseases hospital — the only referral hospital of its kind in Southern Africa. Get additional experience in the busy A&E department, and see an abundance of HIV and related conditions (including mother to child transmission). You may also see things that would, in the UK, be preventable. For example, in Zambia, diarrhoea is the leading cause of death of children under 5.

The hospital we’ve partnered with in Lusaka is actually four hospitals on one campus — the adult hospital, paediatric hospital, mother and newborn hospital, and the cancer and diseases hospital. Our flexible placements mean you can rotate through all of these alongside friendly and welcoming staff. In terms of cases, you can get experience with conditions such as glaucoma, clubfoot, malnutrition, paediatric HIV and cervical cancer — one of the most significant causes of death amongst women in Zambia. There are also burns units, renal units and non-communicable disease units. Please note that we cater to all branches of nursing.

At our partner hospital, you’ll attend live births on a daily basis, with the potential to get involved in both pre and postnatal care. Unlike some of our other destinations, midwives in Lusaka are responsible for the birth itself. As mothers often favour giving birth in larger national hospitals as opposed to lying-in clinics, there’s a high number of births. You’ll have the opportunity to see things like breech births and other emergency birthing situations, as well as mothers with HIV, malnutrition and a host of other complications. This is one of the many reasons why a midwifery placement with Work the World is so unique.

The hospital with whom we’re partnered has a busy physiotherapy department. We’ll place you alongside a team of seasoned professionals who work with patients in clubfoot clinics, patients with neurological disorders like strokes and Bell’s palsy, amputees, and burns patients. You can also spend time in the hospital’s custom gym, and see how the hospital makes its own prostheses. You can even get experience with respiratory therapy and orthopaedics.

Ambulances in Zambia are driven not by paramedics, but by drivers with no clinical experience. That means emergency cases are first dealt with when they arrive at hospital rather than on scene. Add to that the fact that your placement hospital’s A&E department is the city’s main major trauma centre, and you quickly realise that your experience here will be eye-opening. Local patients are typically from economically disadvantaged areas, so you will see the impact that has on both the cases and the care.

With up to 300 patients per-day coming through the doors of our partner hospital’s radiography department in Lusaka, there’s a wealth of experience to be had. It’s common for patients to be referred to the hospital you’ll be placed in from smaller clinics in the surrounding community. This means you'll gain experience observing and analysing a wide range of conditions. The radiography department has modern diagnostic equipment, but it also has a range of analogue techniques to get around power cuts that can happen in the region from time to time. That means you could learn how to develop X-rays in the hospital’s darkroom. It’s also possible to get experience in the cancer and diseases hospital upon request.

On a pharmacy placement in Lusaka, you’ll discover that local standards are extremely similar to those found in hospitals in the UK. Lack of access to certain medicines and low staffing levels do hamper progress, but you’ll still find yourself checking scripts, doing clinical rounds and spending time in the dispensaries found in the paediatrics, adult and mother and newborn hospitals, as well as in surgery. The hospital also synthesises its own chemotherapy drugs.

As a dentist, clinical experience in Lusaka is unique. Alongside specialists in our partner hospital you’ll take part in daily clinics — one of which is for patients struggling to meet the cost of care. In fact, this is the only hospital in Lusaka where patients can obtain free or low-cost treatment. The normal procedures are carried out here like restorations and fillings, but due to a lack of oral hygiene education, patients often present late meaning that some cases will be much more severe than you’ll have seen at home. It’s also possible to observe maxillofacial surgeries here.