Tanzania Elective

Teaching the radiology residents at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in Tanzania has been a great experience for all residents that participated in the global radiology elective. It is a challenging, yet rewarding aspect of the elective as the visiting residents get to teach more junior residents in Tanzania.

Most of the residents will consider the peak of their knowledge in all aspects of radiology to be right after taking the core exam during the third year of training, explaining why Dr. Minja identified this cohort as particularly effective in teaching the more junior radiology residents at MUHAS.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly half the world has little or no radiology services or access to picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), electronic health records, radiological information systems (RIS), or hospital information systems.

The Yale Global outreach team has a dedicated focus of implementing PACS setup at various sites. To this goal, the implementation of PACS at MOI was successfully completed in December of 2014 (Song JW et al. Successful Implementation of a PACS in Tanzania. Journal of the American College Radiology).

The digitization of images which enables the radiologist to store, pan, zoom, save, retrieve and compare images became possible with these efforts. Currently we are playing an active role in launching the usage of microphones and dictation software for usage in Tanzania for the first time, training staff and providing support as needed. This is an exciting step and will improve radiology services in Tanzania.

*"Speech Recognition to cut Waiting time in Muhimbili"

Yale has been assisting Tanzanian faculty with developing and structuring a curriculum for Neuroradiology subspecialty training at Muhimbili National Hospital.

This would be the first Radiology subspecialty training in Tanzania and could pave the way for initiation and implementation of other subspecialty training programs, such as Breast Imaging and Interventional Radiology.

Yale trainees apply directly to Dr. Frank Minja. Once preliminary approval has been granted, the documents listed under the step-by-step guide must be submitted starting about three months prior to departure.

Interested trainees and faculty from outside institutions can provide their information in the contact form.

Use the Tanzania elective travel checklist to keep track of all documents and required actions. Trainees going to Tanzania for the global radiology elective need to obtain and submit all documents referenced in the travel checklist. The checklist and all required forms are available in the Google folder which will be shared with you. Please scan and upload all forms and documents into your folder.