Working for I-TECH

I am working for the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH). I guess I should give you a little background before talking about what I will actually be doing… I-TECH is working in collaboration with U.S. Center for Disease Control and the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to strengthen the training of health care workers in Tanzania. Currently there is a severe shortage of qualified healthcare workers in the local hospitals, health centers, and village clinics throughout the country. There is about 50 physicians per million people in the urban areas of Tanzania, and only 16 physicians per million in the rural areas. Sometimes those numbers are just so hard to wrap my mind around… just think of how many physicians you may see on one floor in a U.S. hospital.

An extensive training network exists across Tanzania and consists of 8 different Zonal Health Training Institutes (ZHTI). These institutes are basically universities where the students study to become Assistant Medical Officers (AMO), Clinical Officers, Clinical Assistants, and Nurses, all which study for a shorter period of time and can not do as much as a physician, but they can ultimately reduce the shortage of workers in the field. The AMOs go to school for 5 years to receive an advanced diploma in Clinical medicine. AMOs are able to perform about 60-80% of the clinical work of physicians, and they are often the only staff at hospitals in rural districts. The Clinical Officers go to school for 3 years to receive a diploma in Clinical Medicine, while the Clinical Assistants go to school for 2 years to receive a certificate in Clinical Medicine. The Clinical Officers and Assistants are often the sole healthcare providers at the lower level health centers and small village clinics. They are able to perform basic clinical work, like vaccinations, treating minor conditions, and delivering babies (this one doesn’t seem like basic clinic work to me, but its considered basic here since most people living in the bush do not have access to proper care.)

So that’s a little background on the training institutes, and basically my role in it all is that I’m an I-TECH Field Officer for one of the eight training institutes. I-TECHs office is in Dar es Salaam, so I’m the only person from the organization at this institute. I will be doing research to create a health profile of the southern zone- basically just what resources they have and what they need in the hospitals, health centers, and clinics in this zone. I will also be teaching 2 courses to the Clinical Officers- ‘Health Promotion and Advocacy’ and ‘Communication & Counseling Skills.’ Yesterday I was also asked if I would be interested in writing a grant for a future project they have in mind… I will definitely be busy, but I’m excited about my role here.

In other news… we are still waiting to move into our house, but they are making serious progress so I am hopeful that we will move in this weekend. Moss and I went to check it out yesterday and they have finished building the fence around the back, replaced the screen windows, put in a water tank, and they are in the process of painting the house inside and out. Throughout Tanzania (well in every village I have been to so far) the inside of the majority of houses (the ones that are not made of mud) are painted two different colors- the bottom 5 feet of the walls are normally a bright color and then top half is white. I’m not quite sure why they do this, but it definitely makes the painting process take much longer. So our new color scheme is bright peach and white- it’s really not too bad, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. The inside kind of reminds me of a beach house, but the outside is a whole different story… it’s peach and a puke-like orange! I have my fingers crossed that they will paint over the puke orange, but either way I’m just excited to finally have a place to call home.