Touch: a vital prescription for an urgent need
The Touch Foundation’s drive to cultivate more and better-trained healthcare workers in sub-Saharan Africa is building powerful momentum.
We’ve chosen Tanzania as our initial focus because of its status as a stable democracy that welcomes our support, and because the healthcare needs of Tanzanians are dire and compelling: Only one doctor exists for every 40,000 people. Unless access to medical care is drastically improved, the average Tanzanian will die by the age of 44.
Touch’s initial project to expand the Bugando University College of Health Sciences (BUCHS) in Mwanza, Tanzania, is exhibiting promising results. In the past three years alone, we have increased the number of doctors-in-training at BUCHS from 10 to 85, and we are well on our way to reaching our goal of educating 250 medical students each year. We will soon begin training additional cadres of healthcare workers at BUCHS in such fields as nursing and pharmacy.
We attribute much of our early success to a unique collaboration among the BUCHS faculty, which includes some of the most renowned doctors in Tanzania; the Touch Foundation; the Tanzanian Episcopal Conference; Maryknoll; McKinsey & Company; Citigroup; Stroock & Stroock & Lavan; Weill-Cornell Medical College, and the myriad individuals committed to addressing one of the most life-threatening issues facing humanity: the severe shortage of healthcare workers in Africa.
In addition, we would like to recognize the remarkable commitment and dedication of the 85 students currently enrolled at BUCHS, many of whom are the children of rural farmers. Many are the first in their families to attend a university and the first in their community to become a doctor.
These students have firsthand experience with the urgency of the healthcare crisis in Tanzania, and they dismiss the rigors of medical school as insignificant compared with the benefit of saving the lives of thousands in their communities and beyond.
That said, these 85 young men and women represent only the first phase in Touch’s long-term prescription for health. Ultimately, the continued expansion of the healthcare infrastructure could lengthen and enhance the lives of millions, not only in Tanzania but throughout East Africa and beyond. Our support of the Touch Foundation is imperative to achieving this goal – to ensuring, in the words of the principal of BUCHS, that “Health has no borders.”