Tanzania Rotation

Tanzania Rotation Offers Students Opportunity to Practice in Underserved, Rural Area

Each January, select fourth year students spend five weeks in Tanzania as part of a multidisciplinary experiential rotation.

Working alongside physicians and medical students from the University, they practice at the Ilula Lutheran Hospital in rural central Tanzania.

The rotation includes:

• participating in clinical rounds with the medical staff
• seeing patients with malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and other diseases not normally seen in the U.S., including parasitic enteric infections
• learning about the flow of drug distribution processes
• giving presentations to hospital staff
• visiting local pharmacies and a pharmacy school
• conducting free health assessments, including blood pressure, glucose, eye exams and drug therapy education
• working with physicians in the outpatient clinic
• traveling to surrounding villages with the mobile HIV and maternal-fetal clinics

While this international rotation provides students with invaluable hands-on patient care opportunities, it also helps fill a critical pharmacy need in Tanzania.

“Tanzania is in its infancy in development of pharmacy services relative to the western world,” explained preceptor Jill Strykowski. “Most retail settings cannot hire a pharmacist as the ratio of vacancies is about 10 sites to one pharmacist. The majority of hospital settings do not employ a pharmacist.”