Traditional Birth Attendants

As part of our rollout of Labor & Delivery and Reproductive & Child Health services, in 2015, we conducted a very focused program of community outreach. Targeting “gatekeepers” to healthcare, our community outreach team spent 10 days in the field, reaching out to local dispensaries and Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in 28 communities throughout the Karatu and Ngorongoro districts.

The goal of this program is to inform local healthcare providers about the new maternal health services available at AFAS Medical and to provide information on complications of pregnancy for which care should be sought at a health center. Over the course of the outreach, our team has met personally with 111 active TBAs, as well as healthcare workers at 26 area dispensaries. We’ve also hosted 89 TBAs at the AFAS campus to participate in an informative session & receive a tour of our facilities.

Neurology

In 2020, 435 patients were seen during our bi-annual neurology clinic. Long-time volunteer, Dr. Michael Rubenstein helped spearhead this program in 2013 and has since been the connection for our collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Residency Program, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Dr. Michael travels to AFAS with UPenn Neurology residents, bringing expertise in adult and pediatric neurology, movement disorders, and epileptology.

People with neurological conditions represent a very underserved population in Tanzania. Thus, we have patients coming from as far away as Dar es Salaam and Tanga for consults. In addition to clinic drop-in days, the neurology team, along with AFAS community outreach staff, conducts a drop-in and follow-up clinic at previously identified low-resource dispensaries located in some of the most remote parts of the district.