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IntroductionThis section contains elective reports from Tanzania. Use the menu above to select a particular hospital/region. General Information
Money: For some reason, most hotels and places prefer payment in American dollars, so take some with you! Traveller's cheques can be a hassle to change, especially if they're in pounds. Also, lots of places and cashpoints only accept visa rather than maestro or mastercards. The nearest cashpoint to the hospital is 40kms away in Tanga!
MuhezaTeule Hospital, Tanga
Destination contact: Dr Sally Edmonds. Hospitali Teule, Private Bag, Muheza, Tanga, Tanzania +255 27 2644121 >bennsal@teule.org.uk The hospital can be quite popular, and normally you need to contact Sally about a year in advance. They charge you £100 for the attachment. The hospital Teule is a district hospital with around 400 beds in Muheza, a town in the northeast of Tanzania. The hospital had 4 Medical wards, two Surgical ward, two Paediatric wards and a maternity unit comprising a delivery suite and an ante/post-natal ward . Specialist services included an ICU (very basic, essentially the same as other wards, but with less beds so patients could be more closely monitored), dental, eye and physio departments and a Palliative Care / HIV centre known as the Diana centre. Xray and USS were offered as were most basic laboratory services plus a specialist microbiology service. How I spent my time... I spent my time with different departments and attended clinics and ward rounds in paediatrics, palliative care, surgery, medicine and went on an outreach visit to nearby villages. There are some opportunities to practise practical procedures such as LPs and chest drains, but the hospital doesn't have much equipment and often the needles are blunt, or you have to wait to do the procedure as the equipment needed is in the autoclave. There is also a high incidence of HIV among the patients, so you have to be very careful. Teaching was very limited, as at the time of our visit there weren't any Western doctors at the hospital. From previous reports, I think there are normally a few Western doctors who take students under their wing and provide good teaching. However, the local doctors are mostly very friendly, speak relatively good english and are happy to teach during clinics and ward rounds. It is also possible to get involved in a lot of surgery for students who are interested in surgery. Despite lack of proper teaching, it was an interesting attachment with lots of pathology to be seen! Although it was also quite depressing at times as the management of the patients was so limited by their lack of resources, including a lot of medications, any radiology apart from chest and abdo x-rays and basic blood tests which are considered routine here, such as liver functions and electrolytes. The paediatrics ward was the most well-equipped as they get grants from ongoing clinical trials, and had more medications and blood tests available than the other wards, but it was quite an eye-opener to see the number of children with malnutrition and cerebral malaria. The staff were mostly very friendly and spoke reasonable English, although a basic knowledge of Swahili would have been very helpful in communicating with the patients. Accomodation Accomodation is provided by the hospital and is cheap (£12 per week) but very basic. You get your own room with fan and mosquito net, and it's quite clean. But the toilet and showers are across the courtyard, so you have to go outside to get to them. The water supply stops after around 4pm, so you have to fill up buckets for the afternoon. Also, we weren't convinced that the fridge actually worked properly so we ended up having to go to the market almost every day to buy food, which wasn't much fun in the boiling heat and rain! The kitchen does have a functioning cooker and oven though, and there is a maid who does the washing up and will do your washing for a few pence per item. Also, may sound obvious as it is Africa, but there are a lot of bugs around, especially during rainy season, so make sure you take lots of insect repellent. What to take Other advice about the hospital: Take a BNF, Oxford Clinical handbook, and probably a tropical diseases book. There isn't much to do in the evenings there, so take reading books, and maybe travel games if you're going in a group! There is a computer with internet access at the hospital, though sometimes you have to wait a while to use it. Interesting places to visit around Teule Short breaks: Usamabara Mountains (Lushoto), Pangani (Paponi Beach Resort), Tanga. More extended trips: Arusha for safari to Ngorogoro Crater, Lake Manyara & Serengeti (very beautiful, definitely worth doing!), Mount Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar |
