Weill Cornell Deparment of Medicine | Divisions & Programs | International Medicine & Infectious Diseases

Tanzania Program

In 2006, a formal affiliation was established between Weill Cornell Medical College and the Bugando University College of Health Sciences (BUCHS) and Bugando Medical Center in (BMC) in Mwanza, Tanzania. BMC is an 850-bed tertiary care center serving a population of ~12 million Tanzanians. BUCHS was founded in 2003 and is currently in the process of scaling up to a capacity of 60 medical students per class/year. Since 2005, the philanthropic TOUCH foundation has supported the BUCHS and the BMC. The TOUCH foundation has provided Weill Cornell with a matching grant for a pilot program addressing the educational needs of BUCHS/BMC.

The common goal of the TOUCH foundation and Weill Cornell is to make BUCHS/BMC the best medical school and teaching hospital in East Africa. The goal of the Weill Cornell collaboration is to aid in the development of the BUCHS/BMC infrastructure and training programs by the exchange of faculty, fellows, residents and students. Long-term goals are to create a platform for self-sustaining research programs and clinical knowledge transfer as in our Haiti and Brazil programs. During the first year of the program, Weill Cornell will rotate 50 senior teaching residents and fellows in medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology to Tanzania. Two Weill Cornell faculty members have been recruited and are based in Mwanza to serve as mentors, for both the Tanzanian and Weill Cornell medical students and physicians at BUCHS/BMC. Plans for the involvement of Weill Cornell Medical College pre-clinical faculty and graduate student tutors at BUCHS are being implemented.

For additional information, please see the Weill Cornell Medicine 2007 Publication (Tanzania)