Tanzania

Since 2011, we have been working to change this through the Health Partnership Scheme.

In 2016, THET established an office in Dar es Salaam to deliver programmes and projects that support and are aligned to the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, the Elderly and Children’s (MoHCDGEC) priorities with a particular focus on health workforce development.

Since then we have been supporting the MoHCDGEC and the President’s Office Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG) to train and deploy the Community Health Worker cadre.

You can read our Tanzania Strategic Plan 2017-2021 here.

Ethical Care Scoping in Tanzania

AIM: To generate important insights on constructive interventions with a view to promoting and sustaining respectful care from healthcare professionals, with an initial focus on primary and secondary maternity care.

Partners:

• University of Surrey
• The Exthos Foundation

From the limited number of studies that have been undertaken on ethical and respectful care in Tanzania, it has been found that some health professionals implement unethical practices while dispensing their duties and some have limited knowledge on ethical codes of conduct.

Through interviewing healthcare workers, patients and caregivers, we will gather evidence on the positive and challenging aspects of respectful and ethical care in primary and secondary maternity care in the Tanzanian Health System. We will then develop recommendations for educational, research-based and organisational strategies to promote and improve the standard of ethical and respectful care provided to patients and care-givers using health facilities.

To do this we will:

• Collect data from two health centres (one rural and one urban) and two hospitals (one regional and one district) in relation to women utilising maternity services.
• Analyse the data and produce a report that will include recommendations to the Tanzanian Government on improving the respectful care provided to women using maternity services.

Read the announcement here.

Support to Establish an Academic Partnership between the UK and Tanzania 

AIM: To support the development an academic partnership between the UK and a Tanzanian partner which will lead to joint research activities with a focus on decentralised care and quality service provision. 

Partners:

• Queen Mary’s University London (QMUL) 
• Veta Bailey Trust

Building on THET’s experience in Ethiopia and understanding that academic partnerships in global health are vital to ensuring that we are working toward evidence-based solutions for the challenges that people face in accessing high-quality, appropriate healthcare services around the world. 

We have therefore developed a pilot project that will result in: 

• The establishment of a partnership between QMUL with the chosen Tanzanian institution. 
• The identification of junior lecturers with an interest in primary and community health care who could benefit from expertise to build their research capacity. 
• A roundtable workshop, to share experiences with interested Tanzanian colleagues on methodologies and lessons learnt with a focus on undertaking primary health research in a decentralised model of care. 

Read the announcement here.

For further information about THET’s work in Tanzania please contact our Country Coordinator, Linnet Griffith-Jones.