Bugando leaders visit New York City
In the week leading up to our Asante Supper event in June, we welcomed the leadership of Bugando to New York for several days of strategic planning discussions.
Our Tanzanian partners in attendance included Rt. Reverend Bishop Balina, chairman of both the hospital and medical university, Dr. Charles Majinge, Director-General of Bugando Medical Centre (BMC), Professor Jacob Mtabaji, Principal of Bugando University College of Health Sciences, and Dr. Frederick Kigadye, former Director of BMC, former Director of Hospitals for the Ministry of Health, and current secretary of the Tanzanian Episcopal Conference. We were also happy to welcome home our Mwanza-based staff to participate in these critical meetings on the future trajectory of our work at Bugando and in the surrounding region.
The week began with a full day of management, mindset and capabilities training exercises led by teams of Touch and McKinsey experts. The following days were divided between strategy meetings with Touch staff and visits to our partners at Weill Cornell Medical College.
At Weill Cornell, our guests toured the hospital and university facilities and met with students, residents, professors and administrators from several areas of the institution. Over the past several years, BUCHS and Weill Cornell have developed a strong partnership, specifically through the placement of visiting Weill Cornell doctors and faculty at Bugando, and through training opportunities offered to Bugando staff in New York. In light of this relationship, the delegation was very happy to meet more Weill Cornell faculty and staff and interact with the students working there.
Following our Asante Supper in the middle of the week, the delegation spent their final days in New York participating in intensive problem-solving sessions with Touch staff and leadership. We were privileged to have the valuable insights and knowledge of our Tanzanian partners as we outlined our immediate next steps at Bugando, and discussed our future plans to expand our work into the surrounding Lake Zone region, and ultimately, throughout the country.
Immediate priorities at Bugando include both physical and systemic reengineering at the hospital to improve efficiency, efficacy and progress in critical areas such as infection control and maternal mortality. These interventions correlate with the recommendations of a team of Johns Hopkins experts who performed an assessment of Bugando in May, as well as Weill Cornell doctors who have lived and practiced at Bugando.
These collaborative workshops, incorporating the perspectives of the Bugando leadership, our ground staff, and our New York based team, proved to be an invaluable venue for effectively brainstorming and outlining the plans that will allow us to have greater impact in Tanzania. And in addition to their clear interest in strengthening bUCHS, we were strongly encouraged by the leadership’s problem-solving and participation in the development of our Lake Zone Initiative plan to address health systems issues more broadly in a third of Tanzania.
We benefited tremendously from the contributions of the Bugando delegation, and we look forward to welcoming them to New York again in the future.