Letter from the president
A letter from President, Lowell Bryan.
Dear Friends,
The past several months at Touch have been an exciting time of growth and transition as we refine our approach to best serve the people of Tanzania.
While there is one doctor for every 198 people in New York City, there is still only one doctor for every 29,413 people in Tanzania. Maternal and infant mortality rates in the country continue to be among the highest in the world, with an infant’s chance of survival being eleven times worse in Tanzania than in the US. Our progress at Bugando University College of Health Services (BUCHS) has been exciting and motivating, but there remains tremendous work to be done.
As we work to maximize the impact of your investments at the medical university and teaching hospital of Weill Bugando, we are developing several promising partnerships that will allow us to broaden the scope of our work and achieve the greatest results for Tanzania. On September 20th we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US government, solidifying our commitment to collaborate and share resources for the improvement of health care and treatment in Tanzania.
Our continued investment and on the ground involvement at BUCHS has further strengthened our working relationship with the leadership of Bugando, and we were fortunate to share several days of strategy meetings with them in New York surrounding our Asante Supper event in June. Their presence at Asante Supper 2007, as well as that of 5th year medical student, Stella Mongella, added tremendously to the success of the evening. With over three hundred friends and supporters in attendance, Asante Supper 2007 celebrated the progress we are making at BUCHS and honored the inspirational work of the students in Mwanza.
In addition to strengthening our ties with Bugando, our relationship with the Tanzanian government has also deepened. In a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and a Letter of Support signed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in July, the Tanzanian government expressed its wholehearted support for our work. The MOU formalizes our existing collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and requests our support in achieving the government’s national health goals.
We also welcomed HE President Jakaya M. Kikwete and First Lady Mama Salma Kikwete to New York in September, and hosted a dinner with some of our partners in their honor.
The dinner, at which we signed and announced our MOU with the US government, was a tremendous evening that allowed us to bring together several of our partners and supporters to exchange ideas and discuss our shared objectives to improve the health system in Tanzania.
Through our efforts to develop BUCHS into a model for health worker training and health care delivery, we have learned that in its role as the pinnacle health facility of the Lake Zone region, its success as an institution is linked to the regional health system which it serves. Optimal health worker training requires a functional health system in which students can learn clinical skills, and ultimately go on to practice.
While we will continue our significant investment in the redevelopment of BUCHS, the next phase of our work in Tanzania seeks to address this reality by holistically evaluating the health system in the six regions that make up the Lake Zone. We are drawing heavily upon our public-private partnership model as we build a coalition to launch our work in the Lake Zone, leveraging the financial and experiential resources of our partners to accomplish our mission.
In our last newsletter we mentioned the request of the Tanzanian government for us to work on their Twiga Initiative, a proposal to conduct nationwide capacity strengthening of health worker training. In October, we launched our participation in Twiga. A joint team composed of Touch and McKinsey & Company consultants is undertaking a comprehensive evaluation of Tanzania’s existing health worker training facilities with the goal of developing strategies and an operational plan to increase capacity and alleviate the country’s severe shortage of health workers.
In order to accomplish the work we view as essential to our mission in Tanzania, we are actively expanding the capacity of our own organization through the development of relationships with foundations, governments, corporations, and individual investors. We have also increased our efforts to spread the word about Touch through initiatives targeting the active community of young professionals here in New York City. We hope you will help us in this effort by sharing the mission of Touch with your own friends and colleagues.
The progress that we are achieving is possible only through your support. We are grateful for your commitment to Touch, and we hope for your continued involvement as we move forward to improve healthcare in Tanzania.
Warmest regards,
Lowell Bryan