Health Project in tanzania

Project Summary

There is an obvious lack of manpower and resources in the local hospitals, which are located in the outer city areas and villages and urgently, need volunteers. As a medical volunteer in Tanzania, you will work in these rural health posts and community clinics. You mostly work as an assistant to the doctor. Work responsibilities vary with your education, skill and experience.

Skill/Qualification

Volunteers/Interns interested in joining the volunteer health program in Tanzania must possess health care certification, such as an ID as a medical student, EMT or paramedic certification, or nursing or physician's credentials. Medical volunteers without credentials are not allowed to work in this program because of the potential risk. The hospitals require a copy of your resume, clearly stating credentials and education, before your arrival to the project.

Volunteer's responsibilities:

Job responsibilities of volunteers joining as a medical volunteer vary with education, skills, experience, and qualifications. Volunteers/Interns are not allowed to perform the major identification or surgery works. Most of the time volunteers help doctors or work as an assistant to doctors. Volunteers measure BP, temperature, height, weight Assist doctors and medical staffs with health center tasks. You also help in health camps (if any), distribute medicines, provide tips to patients on health, nutrition and sanitation and counseling patients, and involve yourself in the treatment for minor injuries or wounds and keeping patient records.

Room/Food/supervision

IFRE manages living accommodations, provides meals and supervision for volunteers for the entirety of their stay in Tanzania . During the volunteer period, most volunteers stay in our safe and secure homebase in Moshi/Arusha. IFRE's home base is located in a beautiful area nearly 30 km from the Kilimanjaro International Airport . We try to create a “home away from home” for volunteers staying at our home base. It is a perfect situation for volunteers to live safely and comfortably while making many new friends and sharing experience every day. Most of volunteers project in Tanzania are located within 1-10 KM of our home base so you may walk or ride a local bus to your project. In the evening when you return to home base, you can relax, eat dinner, explore local areas or simply share experience with volunteer comrades. Our home base provides a same-gender shared room and shared bathroom with running water and a “western” style toilet.

Occasionally, depending on volunteer traffic, available projects or distance to a volunteer's assigned project, we may also place our volunteers with carefully pre-screened host families. Our host families are socially respected and are experienced with hosting international volunteers. They have strong interest in our volunteers' safety and well being and demonstrate this with caution and care. In most host family situations, volunteers will share a room with another volunteer of the same gender. Another viable option is an at-orphanage stay. Many orphanages in Tanzania have set aside special rooms to house international volunteers.

Throughout the volunteer project, our local staff stays in contact with volunteers with either face-to-face visits or via email/telephone. IFRE's main office is in Moshi and our in-country coordinator serves as a point of contact for local volunteers. With longer placements, we visit our volunteers every 2 weeks (when possible) and volunteers are always welcome at the local office. If project placement is local, we request that volunteers stop by the office once a week to keep us posted on how they are doing with their home stay and project. If project placement is very far from our main office, then our local staff members maintain communication by either email and/or phone and the local project director serves as a volunteer's contact.