Enduring Impact

Healthcare Worker Training

Tanzania, like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, faces a severe health workforce shortage. To address this crisis, we spent our first several years investing in solutions that would improve healthcare worker training and increase the numbers of healthcare workers in Tanzania. Because our ultimate goal is always to transition program management to local ownership, we have since phased out our direct support for healthcare worker training, leaving our local partners in control of programs that continue to sustain. 

We supported the creation and growth of a premier medical school in Tanzania’s Lake Zone, Catholic University of Allied Health and Sciences (CUHAS). With our assistance, the school has trained over 6,000 healthcare workers, a number that increases by the hundreds every year as they continue to operate independently. In partnership with CUHAS and its associated teaching hospital, Bugando (BMC), we also created a revolutionary Treat & Train Network to improve clinical education. 

The Treat & Train Network

With our Treat & Train Network, we improved clinical education by connecting hospitals so medical and nursing students from CUHAS could gain valuable hands-on clinical experience in small external rotations while also helping to provide better care to patients in under-resourced rural health facilities. With CUHAS and BMC thriving independently, we phased out our direct support in 2019 and CUHAS-BMC now lead the Treat & Train clinical external rotations program independently. 

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Our comprehensive approach ensured that the essential elements of a well-functioning health system are in place at each Treat & Train Network facility:

  • Healthcare Workers: At its core, the Treat & Train Network strengthens healthcare worker training to improve health services. At the same time, hospital faculty provide specialty services that are otherwise unavailable in certain remote areas and supervise students as they lend an extra hand in short-staffed facilities. 
  • Healthcare Management and Leadership: During program implementation, we provided hospital leadership with opportunities for continued professional development. Today, our partners at CUHAS-BMC lead the Treat & Train program independently and the Network continues to thrive. 
  • Infrastructure: Touch Foundation invested in key infrastructure, such as a waste incinerator, power generators, and Cesarean-section operating rooms, to ensure that patients can get the care they need. 
  • Technology: Over the years, Touch Foundation invested in healthcare technology to improve healthcare education, which ultimately also expanded access to care. We continue to work with BMC to strengthen the capacity of their engineering department to maintain and repair medical technology. Read more about our Healthcare Technology Management Program here.
  • Medical Supplies: Touch Foundation donated medical supplies, such as surgical kits and hospital beds, to health facilities in the Treat & Train Network to ensure basic care can be provided.