Treat and Train: Expand access to medical care in rural areas

Simply training healthcare workers is not enough. We have to deploy trained healthcare professionals to rural areas where there are the greatest unmet medical needs.

Tanzania's few healthcare workers are concentrated in the urban areas at larger hospitals so many sick and injured Tanzanians in the outlying rural areas cannot reach a hospital adequately staffed with healthcare workers. As a result, they cannot receive timely life saving treatment.

Because of the successful growth in healthcare worker training, Touch is now poised to deploy multi-disciplinary clinical reams to rural district hospitals. Touch has developed an innovative, cost effective system of pooling and rotating clinical teams through these hospitals. These doctor-led teams can provide patient care where it is most needed and district hospitals can serve as satellite clinical facilities to train even more healthcare workers. This system of "treating and training" will greatly improve retention.

The shortage of healthcare workers in rural areas is a major factor in the very poor maternal and child mortality rates in Tanzania, which are far worse than in neighboring Uganda and Kenya. One benefit of this new program will be to bring OB/GYN specialists within reach of many women in rural areas for the first time.